Night of the Dead
by LadyMarissaGarmadon
Summary: Hatsu's daughter is missing, Kai has woken up, Jessica Blackman is born, and Sigan makes plans to use young Ruby to bring an end to the realms with the help of an actual ghost of the past this time. The ninja will have their work cut out for them as their deadline to save the world is Halloween, which was once called an ancient night of monsters and mayhem; Night of the Dead.
1. Chapter 1

Oh boy did it feel good to hug your brother when you thought you never would get the chance to again. Nya promised she wouldn't take that one for granted ever again.

"So how long was I out for?" He finally remembered to ask after hours of being awake, that was kind of important to know. He couldn't stand up very well though so he was still seated in the hospital bed. "When can I see Skylar?" he tiredly asked.

"You've been out for weeks, we lost count to be honest," the younger sister sniffled a bit, but wasn't crying anymore. "And no, you can't get up right now! Sky is fine! The baby isn't coming, she's just sick and stressed and they're just making sure she's perfectly fine." She attempted to reassure the older sibling.

"It's all my fault," he laid back down, covering his eyes. "I'm a freaking idiot for doing that to her… you don't know what it was like though Nya… it felt so nice… I wanted to believe it was real, it felt like it too!"

Nya just nodded, holding his hand, "I know you miss them Kai; I do too. No one blames you, the others had to let go of the dreams Sigan put them in as well… giving them the life they always wanted and they really got caught up in it-"

"But they woke up within a day! What does that say about me!?" the fire ninja shouted at her. "It means I'm stupid and…" he trailed off, just staring at the ceiling. "Lloyd told me about the one with his family, he wanted to stay; he wanted to be a kid again, to have a normal family, and yet he put that aside to wake up."

"Stooop!" Nya snapped. "You always do this to yourself and you gotta start accepting that everyone in this family is different and you're not to blame yourself for what that idiot did to all of us!" She honestly couldn't take hearing anymore self deprecating talk.

Out of nowhere though, Jay slammed the door open so hard the brother and sister were afraid that it would have fallen off the hinges. "She's having that baby." He didn't exactly look excited about this... also knowing that Kai would plow right through them, weak or not.

Kai pushed his sister's arm away when she tried to hold him down. "That's my girlfriend Nya!" he shouted. "I think I have a right to freaking be there when my kid is born!" he growled when she opened her mouth to protest. "Now help me up!" he demanded.

Jay jumped to do so, looking at his wife who wasn't happy with him. "Sorry, but I'm not gonna get roasted. I don't want him to singe off my eyebrows or anything!" Nya just shook her head. "This is gonna be a long day after all."

* * *

"Lloooooyd!" The blonde jumped when he saw Lindsy running into the room. "Your sister told me everything that's going on! I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop by! Is Skylar and Kai okay!? I was told he woke up! What about the baby-?" Lloyd clapped a hand over her mouth right away to prevent her from spewing out questions faster than he could answer them.

"Don't freak out." Lloyd calmly told her, looking around for Willow who wasn't to be found yet. Since Willow did decide to stick around, she actually became very good friends with the older girl, which surprised everyone because they were basically opposites. "We're all fine, everything is under control-"

"AAAAAH!"

Seliel quickly opened and closed the door when she came through it. "Yea; everything a-okay under control…" she coughed. "Well…" she brushed her shirt off. "The doctors said that the baby should be okay, though a little premature, they have a lot of confidence that she'll be okay if she arrives today… the hard part is Skylar claims she is literally dying, but I seriously doubt that." She tightly smiled, everything was not okay really.

"Time out! What's he doing out of bed!?" Down the next hallway, Wu didn't sound very pleased when poor Kai was walking with Jay and Nya right behind him or at his side. The fire ninja didn't appear to be quite as weak as they thought he was. "Kai!"

"KAI!" Cole seemed surprised as well. "Dude, come on! You're not supposed be up-"

"Shut up dirt clod! Where's my girlfriend!?"

Zane cut in now as well. "The others are right! Do not injure yourself! We need you well again, I'm sure Nya has explained the situation, it's almost October and we cannot afford to have any of us injured-! Hey!" Kai blew him off to push the door open.

"You're… you're supposed to be back in intensive care," Skylar heavily breathed when she saw the brunette enter the room. "Everyone's yelling at you right now… right?" she closed her eyes, trying to talk.

"You ain't kidding, I was barraged by their complaints," he looked over his shoulder, wondering what they were all talking about right now. "But like I would miss this…" he finally had to sit down, trying to hide how he pretty much collapsed into the seat. His body was still so tired from not using it for weeks.

"It's too early though for her to come… why the hell are you smiling!?" she growled.

"Because I'm sure she's gonna be a stubborn ass like you and turn out totally fine," he smirked, happy to see she couldn't smack him for saying that she was too preoccupied.

* * *

"Ooh, she just has the most beautiful red hair ever! Look at this cutie! Even if she's a little early!" Nya gushed over her new niece more and more as she looked through the window. She was probably more excited than Skylar and Kai were about it. "I wonder what kind of powers she'll inherit."

"Yea; either fire or amber right?" Lloyd looked at the dark skinned baby who was sound asleep for the time being in her own little special crib.

"Actually, she could very well have water powers as well, Kai is still the son of Namiko; it doesn't quite matter as long as the bloodline is there," Garmadon corrected his son. "Just like Nya's baby could have fire powers." Garmadon smirked a bit and looked back at his son. "And I know for sure that you didn't get your light and power abilities from me or your mother."

Willow scrunched her nose when she peaked over the edge to see what the others were looking at. "So she's gonna be okay? She's really small…"

"Yep, that's what the doctors said," Misako, held her daughter's shoulders to reassure her even though the twelve year old pretended to not care all that much. "I'm just happy this little crisis is over and done with." She shook her head.

Right now, the ninja were frustrated with the fact that Sigan vanished into the mist. When Hatsu showed up to talk to Ruby at the school, it was far too late to do anything to keep her from her father's clutches. The demon woman was currently staying in the monastery, though Lloyd's family didn't seem all that thrilled about her presence there. Who could blame them after how many years?

"So what are we going to do if we can't stop Sigan?" the younger girl quietly asked. "Are we all gonna die?"

Her parents exchanged glances. "I don't know Willie… wish I did though," her father looked at his feet as he leaned against the wall. It was hard to believe this whole predicament was something that he would be very supportive of if he was still evil.

Pixal had shown up later on in the day, right when the ninja were getting ready to pack it up and go home for now, looking relieved that everyone was alive and well. "I am so sorry I couldn't get here sooner, I was swamped with work." She hugged Zane first and peaked into Skylar's room where she found both her and Kai asleep in her bed together. "What a relief they're going to be okay."

"Agreed there," Cole peeked into the covered baby carriage that his young son and daughter were both lying in, happy they were still asleep even through all of the commotion and shouting. "Well, I think we should get the twins home guys. Besides; I'm sure all hell has broken loose with someone like Dareth in charge of the place for a few hours…" The earth ninja slumped down, dreading coming home to that first.

Wu started following them out, "Yes, I think that it would be best if we leave them to rest; you know we still have to try and get a lock on Sigan after all." He decided to further remind everyone of their problem.

"Don't remind us please," Jay sounded hopeless.

* * *

Ruby was sat, cross-legged on a chair; it had felt like forever since she was told she never had to go back to the boarding school and was stay with her father in Spinjago City. She thought he was rather odd and always acting like he was withholding anger and annoyance towards her, though she decided to not think too much on it, he seemed to care about her and if it was true that her mother was dead; she didn't have anywhere else to go anyways.

He would tell her odd things too, like how special she was and how there was a great purpose for her that she would have to fulfill soon, but he wouldn't let her ask what that was exactly.

Sigan knew how to work it however; he would play the same cards as he did with Hatsu all those years ago. Though first things first is that he gathered all of his plans and preparations to the unthinkable and destroy the world.

 _"So the first thing I need is the legendary realm crystal…"_ the time ninja paced around his room, looking at an old beat up journal. It was by chance he had found it to be honest, but what a stroke of luck it was. _"I quite wonder who this young man was that spent so much time looking for this thing… he seemed to know enough about it."_

"Um… father?" Ruby peaked in. "I know it is late but I would like to know…" she looked away, "what is it exactly you need me to do? You keep mumbling about some great plan and stuff that I can help you with… w-what is it?"

The trick with her also was that even though her school was one of the top five breeders of young villains, her school held up morals and codes of being one. So it would be difficult determining if she would embrace the destruction of the world or not. But Sigan was smart.

The time ninja showed her the book and little scribbled drawings in it. "Before you can do a thing my dear is we have to find this very special item of the legends…" he smirked. "You see; this is going to be the only way to destroy the people who took your mom from yo- us." He corrected himself quickly.

Ruby's eyebrows rose; he never said anything more than that she was dead; was he finally going to tell her more? "W-what is it for exactly? This thing?" She looked back to the book. "Can I help then?"

Her father narrowed his eyes as he continued to hold the fake smile. "Oh-ho I believe that you can help… you trained in many forms of dark arts right?" he proceeded prod her for information. She nodded. "Well I need to talk to the one that wrote this; though he is long dead now I believe."

"You want a necromancer…" the sixteen year old slowly nodded, seeing where this was going. "I never brought someone specific out of the afterlife before though to talk." She folded her arms and lowered her head. "Just small stuff like talking with any old dead person under an instructor. I was just getting into the advances when you pulled me out of school actually."

 _"Damnit, what the hell are they teaching these kids nowadays!? Necromancy should be close to the top… some evil school Hatsu threw her in! I might actually kill her just for that when I see her again…"_

"I mean; I can always try though," she shrugged, bringing him out of his thoughts. "There's no real harm in doing that. What's the name of the guy who wrote that book anyways? It can help me better."

He seemed pleased with her suggestion though and wondered just how naïve her mother was in raising her to be afraid of him. Nonetheless, he was not about ready to let this opportunity pass him by. "I believe…" he flipped to the very front on the inside of the cover to see a small, messily written name at the bottom left corner. "It's this."

 **Look at that, I'm wasting no time in jumping right into the problem here lol... anyways, I'm sure everyone can see where the hell this fic is going... also, yes, in a way... this is similar to season 5... BUT WE'RE DOING IT MY WAY! Sooo... anyone wanna guess what characters are going to be showing up in this storyline now? :)))) I'll give you a hint; there's 2 of themm both from ns5 ;)**

 **Okay well, not too much to say, I hopefully will get more chapters out, I've bee in the middle of a thousand things, same as always of course, nothing new with that, anyways, thank you for reading and I'll see you guys later in hopefully a different fic update for once XD**

 **~Mar**


	2. Chapter 2

"Kryptarium is throwing a huge hissy fit as we speak because no one can find a match on this guy! It's like he vanished into thin air with Ruby! Not to mention they're equally pissed about how he slipped right out of the place." Jay typed away on his laptop, finishing checking all of the e-mails from the warden with no actual updates. "This guy is on a whole new level of scary…"

Hatsu sat all curled up, paler than ever if that was even possible now. She barely ate anything and couldn't sleep from worrying about what her little unsuspecting Ruby would do to help her father. "I should have realized what he was a long time ago… I should have gotten to her sooner and warned her how horrible he truly is when she started asking me what he was like…" she swallowed hard.

"Heeey, wait, look at this, there was a match!" Pixal exclaimed as she grabbed the computer from Jay and opened a new message. "See! Look; this is from an old library in Sina, it's where a lot of obscure documents and unlabeled works are kept! The museum there handles the strange and rare finds and the one in Ninjago City is just the big spectacle stuff." She spouted off knowledge. "Allegedly someone came in to have a look and he just took it, almost going unnoticed even until they looked back at the security tapes!"

"What was it a book about anyways? Maybe that'll give us a clue as to what he's planning!" Zane seemed rather excited about new information. His eyes quickly scanned the e-mail and nodded quietly. "It says it was some old journal that was found one day next to a corpse that was dug up in the Caves of Despair during excavation work… It had writings and maps about something called a realm crystal that dates back to… well, less than ten years I believe-"

"How could anyone know about that!? That slipped away and is considered a myth now years ago! Impossible!" Wu blurted out. The ninja were all staring at the sensei who promptly closed his mouth.

"Oh just tell them! They have a right to know some family history! It's not like everyone can stay in the dark of this is true about Sigan and that book!" Garmadon shouted at the younger sibling who seemed very reserved about talking about this anymore. "Ugh, fine; I'll tell them instead! Our father had a special item that could help him pass between any dimension he desired-"

"Wait; you're saying that there's more than this world now?" Seliel raised an eyebrow, suspicious of the older masters.

Hatsu nodded quickly, seeming to know of this too. "Oh yes; my kind came from another dimension altogether actually and settled on this place."

"Yes, the Underworld is considered one, it's a sister realm to Ninjago since gateways to in exists here in this world," Misako explained. "Another related one is the Dark Realm. So some are connected to others and it's like a huge map of different territory, only with other dimensions instead of physical landmasses if that makes any sense."

"Yes, Ninjago is in the very center of this theoretical map that other realms branch out from," her husband went on, trying to further explain the concept. "Our father had these gateways everywhere once so people could freely travel through. He decided one day though that realms shouldn't mix… It was just a smart and less complicated move and each realm could exist in its own little bubble in the universe. There was apparently a lot of inter-dimensional crime… I know; I still get bugged out thinking about what the hell our father was thinking when he designed this system."

"Anyways, the gateways were kind of like checkpoints where you get a passport stamped if you would go to sovereign places like Metalonia or Merida." Misako cut in.

Garmadon then continued. "So after the gates were "shut forever"; he made several crystals for responsible masters to travel easier between the worlds to help keep peace, bypassing the shut off gates, but he supposedly destroyed all of them when it was reported that most realms just couldn't be helped and were too messy."

"Maybe all but one was destroyed; you know how he loved to lie to everyone," Misako mumbled. "Don't forget that when he destroyed them, most gates became weaker too and failed to tell everyone that."

Nya frowned, "Okay, so you mean that's why other places have such drastically different geography and creatures altogether? They were completely different dimensions all along? Why didn't you guys bother to tell us all of this beforehand!? I think it would have saved on time right now!"

"It wasn't necessary to tell you when we assumed all the realm crystals were gone and every realm beyond Ninjago and the sister realms to it were shut off and left to their own devices for good," Wu made an excuse. "There was only one backfire with the separation and creation of the different worlds existing in their own bubbles tied to the destruction of the crystals, and that was on one night a year, all of the realms align, the few gates open, and literally all hell can break loose if people don't watch it."

"Halloween… so that's where the spooky monster stuff came from," Cole let out a tired sigh. "I thought that creatures from the Dark Realm and Underworld could only come here though; didn't know it happened _everywhere_!"

"Realms still have their own barriers as well so that's why the Underworld and the Dark Realm are the only ones we have to worry about." Misako quickly explained. "Other realms not connected to here would have to go to great lengths to cross through other realms and find their gates to here; it takes too much time for it to be a problem."

"Wait though; Sigan clearly wants chaos and death, what if he wants to permanently break down the realm's own little bubbles and make these realms get destroyed? Would that mean everything would just get dumped into Ninjago and turn into one master realm or something?" Lloyd just realized this. The adults looked at one another; they had thought of that one before.

"Geeeeez," Jay looked around at the others. "That would be a straight up massacre of Ninjago though if you think about it! People here literally can't do anything without us stepping in to protect them! No one is gonna know how to fight back if that happened; of course they would be chaos and death!"

"That's what he meant then, it has to be if he's interested in a realm crystal." Seliel wiped her eyes tiredly. "This is way too much for me right now to process. My head hurts."

Zane looked up, "Oh; hey, Pixal, what was even the name of the author of that journal thing Sigan stole? I'm quite curious to see who went digging for this knowledge, maybe we've heard of him?" he asked the silver haired android.

"I believe the person was called Morro. Not too sure how old he was though, no one seems to have heard of him." She informed them, searching through her databanks. "Yes; that looks about right, even I have zero knowledge of him coming up; anyways about finding Sigan-"

"Hey; where did Wu go?" Lloyd looked around when he realized his uncle was no longer standing in the living room. "Is there something wrong? He didn't seem to like hearing about that journal thing that got stolen or any of the realm crystal stuff."

His parents exchanged glances and shrugged their shoulders. "Couldn't tell you guys; I never seen him so agitated though; we used to talk about the realm crystal quite often when we were much younger and he never seemed to have a problem with it." Garmadon remembered. "I'll go see what's wrong then if you all are so worried… I say he's just being strange again." He felt his wife leaning on him, throwing hints that he should check on him.

* * *

"Hey uncle Wu…?" Willow shouted as she caught one of the balls a student passed to her, raising an eyebrow when he wouldn't even look their way. "I wonder what's wrong with him." She then noticed her dad was quickly following him.

"Eh; he's always the weird one, and the meaner one," Mel rolled her eyes, catching the ball as Willow threw it back to the older teenager. "Trust me, he's probably pissed off someone broke his teapot…"

The two girls exchanged looks. "Sooo… you wanna go try to listen in?"

"Sure."

* * *

Ruby sat on the ground, looking back the single lit candle in the room at the other ghostly face staring back at her as she held up the book her father had. "Did you write this? Are you Morro?" she quietly asked him.

"I don't believe I'm being pestered by a stupid little girl like you!" he shouted back at her, staring at the journal she held. "Read the ending page; you think I would know anything you're probably after?!" he snapped.

Ruby retracted a bit when she was yelled at angrily, but Sigan held her shoulders and smirked. "I can offer you something you know." The one named Morro raised an eyebrow. "Your enemy is my enemy and I think you'll enjoy a bit of freedom and revenge from your cursed cell of a realm. Ever thought about how much fun it is to pop those silly barriers?"

"I'm listening…"

* * *

"What the hell is wrong with you Wu!?" Garmadon snapped when Wu continually ignored him as he walked past the dorms. "Why are you acting like this anyways? This bothers you all of a sudden? It never used to, even after father had died!"

Wu turned on a heel and faced the older sibling so fast that Garmadon nearly ran into him in was so abrupt. "It is none of your concern I think, _Garmadon_." He proceeded to walk away once more, though he was followed again. "I don't wish to open a can of worms we won't be able to shut. All I want is to find Sigan, take the book back, and burn it forever so no one will get anymore silly ideas or leads on how to destroy the world. It's the only recorded findings that could help further investigations of the hidden site of that last crystal."

"No."

Wu raised an eyebrow when his older brother stated that one word.

"That's not what's really bothering you… you think I'm an idiot Wu?" the taller one frowned with disappointment that the other had lied to him. "You up and left as soon as Pixal said the author's name. Why is that? Did you know them?"

"You could say something like that I suppose…" The younger mumbled and turned away again. "It's not like I can talk to any of you about it anyways-"

"You never told us what you dreamed about Wu… did it have to with them? Did you do something you regret and Sigan tried to fool you into thinking everything was okay? Because I know that feeling all too well little brother. And if you spend your whole life shoving it away instead of facing it, you'll never truly get over it."

Wu continued to walk away from him without another word. "Please stop acting like you know me Garmadon; I don't think you ever truly did."

As the brothers went their separate ways, Willow and Mel looked at each other in confusion and suspicion. "Something's totally up now…" the seventeen year old looked down at the twelve year old. "I wonder if we can dig some stuff up…"

"I was thinking the same thing!" Willow nodded her head once and the two slipped away without being seen.

* * *

"So I guess we can narrow it down to this general area then," Misako circled the small cluster of cities just a little north of Ninjago City. "I don't think Sigan would go very far away, especially if he's caring for Ruby now and doesn't want her to start disconnecting with him if he's trying to get her help, though we can rule Sina out because he wouldn't return to a place he stole from and got caught on camera in."

Hatsu remained silent, nodding every once in a while now as she was being talked to. It sickened her that her daughter could be helping such a monster. She looked up when Garmadon came back in though.

"Wu knows something about this, but he won't talk, I tried, trust me." Garmadon mumbled in his wife's ear who slowly nodded. "I doubt you'll be much help either, but he knows something about the author of this book and to make the matter more interesting… the dream Sigan gave him has to do with this person as well."

"Thanks, I'm sure I can find out something somehow from him, he's more chatty with me of course," she whispered back to him, looking back at the map. "For now I want to focus on Sigan; we can solve Wu's problem later."

* * *

Cole was ready to finally get some sleep when the twins were quiet and falling asleep themselves in their little bassinets. He hoped that their napping schedule would even out of course, but he never got the chance to change from his normal clothes and flop down on his bed because he heard something hitting the back sliding door from the kitchen to the patio.

"What the-? AH!" Cole ducked down when a rock almost hit him in the head after he slid the door open. "Okay! Who's the wise guy out there?!" he growled, wondering which of Garmadon's little troublemakers it would be this time! He wasn't afraid to start bending earth at the monsters, even if they were just kids.

"I knew you'd be here!" a voice came, sounding kind of happy as a smaller child ran around the corner to reveal themselves. "I ran away from the Oppenheimer School! Same as you!" Cole didn't say anything at first, mouth hanging open in shock at what he was seeing.

"CAMERON?!"

"Heyo big bro, miss me?"

 **I'm sorry this one took so long. I'm in limbo of a million things. Inktober, I was making cosplay masks because two friends are dressing up as killjoys (Party Poison and Fun Ghoul for Halloween and I wanted them to be able to have the masks, and I'm working on my costume and my brother's McCree one, and make some youtube videos... AAAAAND yesterday I went to Hot Topic in Hollywood and a week from today I'm meeting Green Day two days before I see them in concert so yea... BUSY, I'M VERY BUSY.**

 **Anyways... um I'm sure you guys remember good ol Cam from The Tournament/The Amulets stories... yea, he exists in this timeline too... I have no shame. Ocs for days is what I say. So yea... also... anyone read the later chapters of The First Masters of Spinjitsu? Because if you did, maybe you'll know where I'm taking this thing with Wu and Morro... and yea, I promise no shitty Cloud Kingdom or like... just BAD SEASON 5 crap here. Like I said, this is season 5 done MY WAY.**

 **Also, the thing with Willie and Mel, I kind of just added on the fly because I got a good idea. I'm telling you 80 percent of my fan fics are me b. my way through it and coming up with stuff on the fly lol**

 **Alrighty, well, hopefully I'll find some time to write more and finish this before Halloween because that is something I'm always afraid will happen... then November will be Christmas fic time just so I can get it out of the way to be posted in December... So thanks for reading I'll see you guys later!**

 **~Mar**

 **Ps; I promise, sometime next week when I'm not dying from the long hours at two concerts, I will be posting The Amulets... maybe even this week if I'm lucky... so yea, later lol**


	3. Chapter 3

The black haired boy smirked as he just stood there like this was perfectly normal and he lived there. His face was all dirty and it looked like he hadn't showered in a week… which he probably didn't.

"W-what!? Dad… he… what!? Dude! What the hell are you doing here!? Dad's gonna kill you when he finds out you're here with us… Or he just might kill me because he'll think I sprang you or something!" He wiped his face; so much for going to bed early now. "This is too much for me to handle right now… of all the times to drop out and take off from school… you pick now."

On that note, Rose or Billie, he didn't care to know at this point, started whining once more, waking up from the light nap they were taking. "Cole! Can you get them!? I'm in the bathroom!"

"I'm gonna kill myself…" he looked up, hearing the second one join in. "Why me?"

"Yea uh, dad said that you got married or whatever?" he raised an eyebrow. "He wouldn't let me come though because that would mean missing school. It's always school with that guy; maybe I don't wanna have anything to do with music," Cameron grumbled angrily. "But hey; I figured I could just come crash here with you guys and all that-"

"Absolutely not! Hate to burst your bubble kiddo, but we're in the middle of trying to save the world here!" The older brother jabbed at the other angrily. "And I can't be babysitting you all day! I'm a ninja! I have serious work to do!" The babies continued to cry in the background to make themselves known to their father.

Cameron chuckled, "Yea, obviously you're not babysitting. But hey; I can help! You know I'm just like you and mom Cole! You know dad hates my powers and doesn't want me to end up getting hurt trying to be like you guys; now's the chance to prove him wrong! I hated being thrown into that boarding school all year round! You did too so I know you know my pain!"

"No! No no no! You're not trained in any way! You can't just jump in and call yourself a ninja! You can't even control a freaking rock without picking it up!" Cole countered, looking over his shoulder; the team was going to find out sooner or later he was here.

"Dude come on… I really don't wanna go back. Please don't make me." The fourteen year old dropped his arms; genuinely looking disappointed at him that he was being turned away.

Cole looked up, letting out a breath and shaking his head, not knowing what to do. "Just… just come in damn it."

"Woo hoo! Thanks!" Cameron jumped, perking right up again, smirking wide that the older sibling gave into his pleads and guilt trips.

"Do you even have any good clothes!? Is that all you have on you?!" Cole then realized just how dirty the younger sibling was.

"Eh, I have a little back somewhere out back that I hid just in case I had the wrong place; didn't wanna shlep it any farther if I didn't have to ya know!" Cameron stopped as soon as his brother pulled on the hood of his sweatshirt. "Hey! You said I could stay!"

"Cole! What's going on!? I thought you were going to handle the babies!" Seliel looked rather angry as she marched out of the bathroom and then noticed the smaller, dirtier version of her husband in the hallway. "Ummmm…" she looked up from Cameron, thinking she was seeing double for a minute there.

"Long story short; this is my brother," Cole gestured to the younger. "I don't talk about him, but I promise you that's the truth and my dad threw him into year round boarding school and he ran away and needs a place to stay. I know this is a really bad time, but I can't leave him on his own because it's not like he'll leave anyways if I kicked him out."

The pink haired ninja slowly nodded, keeping eyes on the younger one. "Ooookay…" she folded her hands together. "Well…" she looked back to their bedroom door. "I have to take care of them… you might wanna clean him up because Garmadon won't appreciate tracking mud in here." She turned went to calm their children down.

Cole sighed and started dragging the sibling along, feeling like he might regret this decision. _"Maybe if I tell Misako first, she'll be ready to defend me to everyone and let Cam stay here without any problems."_

* * *

Mel and Willow poked out from the laundry room when they heard Wu leave his room after feeling like they waited forever. "Finally he left! Geez; what does he do in there all the time!?" Willow grumbled, getting up and making sure no one else was coming around to see them go inside.

The older girl shrugged, "I've known him for like… a few years and he's just a weird, cryptic old man." She dusted her hands off. "He keeps the door locked all the time though so give me a sec." She pulled out a few pins.

"You're going to break in!? You're acting like you've done this all the time!" The younger seemed more nervous now as she looked around more for any sign of her father who would punish them for invasion of privacy. And that was something everyone around there took pretty seriously.

"I do it all the time; I just never saw any point in doing it to Wu because he seemed like a boring dude." The freckled one bit her tongue as she continued to work until hearing the click. "Good; most of the bedroom locks are a piece of cake! Less complicated," she chuckled and opened the door. "Come on," she then turned the light on.

It was a lot neater than the ninja's rooms; that was for sure, it was no surprise to either children. Though there were a few boxes of assorted things pushed halfway into a partially closed closet; and this was where the girls decided to peek into first since most people tend to hide stuff in the closet.

"So dad was saying that Wu might have known that person who wrote the journal Sigan stole from what we overheard," Willow started whispering as she pulled a box out and looking at some old things. "Huh…" she pulled out a battered old kite. "Why would he keep this junk? It looks soooo old!" she asked Mel.

"Like I said; weird, old dude." Mel chuckled and found a busted up teapot. "Never saw this one before; looks kind of old too." She set it back down and went to find something more interesting. "Seems he hoards strange old junk as well then."

"Time out; I think I found something good!" Willow smiled and pulled a leather bound book from underneath the various items. "I think it has pictures in here! Look Mel!" She saw it was some kind of journal, once more, rather old and worn.

"Open it! Journals are always helpful in movies where detectives solve stuff like this!" the other insisted, shaking the twelve year old's shoulders until she complied.

"Whoa… this was my uncle!?" Willow blinked when she saw pictures of a much younger Wu. "Let's see…" she started pulling a few out that were in a fold. "Mom and dad I guess… wow… I guess this was before even Lloyd was born." She noticed her pregnant mother to the side. "Must have been when dad first got Nina…" she looked at the small black cat they were holding.

"Boring; I've seen these, Garmadon has copies of all of these too, nothing special of secretive about those," Mel pushed them aside and went to go digging amongst the pages. "Hey, there's more stuff in here…"

The next one she pulled out was a little boy with black and green hair, flying a kite, back to the camera, and it was the same kite that they found in the box apparently. "Okaaaay. Who the hell is this kid now?! I've never seen him before ever." she looked confused, finding a date. "Whoa… this was... eight years ago, Lloyd was already eight years old then which means that your family was all split up. This kid looks like he's three or four."

"Which means mom and dad, or even Lloyd probably don't know about him… but who is he to my uncle that he wouldn't talk about him?" Willow chewed the inside of her cheek as she thought more about it. "Keep looking for pictures," she skimmed through the journal pages until her eyes would latch onto something interesting. "Umm, here, listen to this!"

 _"Morro is quite angry with me, part of me wonders why I ever gave him that green gi, he smashed the tea pot father gave me and won't leave his room no matter how much I threaten to punish him; like I could ever harm him though."_

The girls stared at one another. "Wasn't… that the name of the person who wrote that stolen journal about the realm crystal!?" Mel remembered hearing about it when listening in. "Soo… that's why he was agitated? It was this kid? Was he a student or something before he took on Lloyd and the guys?!"

"Maybe… He wrote so little in here!" the green eyed girl growled more out of frustration.

"Wait- Stop looking in there and look at this!" Mel whipped out another picture of Wu with another woman; black and green hair, like the boy supposedly named Morro. Willow just stared at this whole thing. What was more surprising is that they seemed very much like a couple when it was painfully obvious Wu had (and maybe still had) the hots for her mother.

"He… had another girl!?" Willow snatched the picture to try and comprehend this. "I may not have known my family for that long, but I thought I knew pretty much everything; Lloyd sat me down and told me all of it, every painful thing." She closed her eyes.

"Well it's obvious old Wu was the most secretive one out of all of them…" Mel started looking for entries and did find a few that mostly likely explained what this all was.

 _"Sayu left without much explanation; she knows I still love another woman; it may be true I still wait for the day Misako could come back and we could pick up the pieces together if I am honest with myself. I still love Sayu as well though, but I fear that I will never get to see her again after today. I should have just asked her to marry me; she might have been the only person who was able to understand me and my pain of losing my entire family. Maybe she's just too much of a free spirit; she is the daughter of the wind after all."_

"Sayu…" Willow looked back at the beautiful woman in the few pictures. "A master of the wind…" Mel kept reading though after seeing that the boy who was flying the kite wasn't holding onto a string or anything he was controlling it on his own apparently.

 _"Of all the things I could see today, of all the people I could have found, it would be him. It would be this Morro. It is undoubtedly her child; her spitting image; her hair, her eyes, her face, her obvious power. He is so powerful for such a young age. She is dead from what he says about her, yet she failed to tell him who his father was before she died, but I know who it has to be, it lines up too well with our short time together."_

Mel and Willow covered their mouths as they stared at one another, not bearing to read the last part just yet, shocked that no one seemed to know about this odd chapter in Wu's life.

 _"That was why she left; she thought I did not love her enough to raise a child with her. I should have known she was pregnant when she left that day and I could have found her if I tried. She had died from her grief though and surely Morro would blame me for her death if he knew I was his father. So I will raise him, I will take him in; I will teach him and love him like how I know she loved him. Maybe he will even be my green ninja."_

"What went wrong then? Why did Morro write that journal about the realm crystal and all that!? He obviously was mad at Wu and left for some reason. Why hasn't anyone heard of this guy?!" Willow started spouting off questions left and right, stunned at what Mel was reading to her.

 _"Morro doesn't question his parentage, he only speaks of his mother and thinks of me as his father; though I'm still terrified to say anything. Today I will test him to see if he truly is the green ninja, but I do not have many doubts that my precious boy will be the one to fight my brother. He has natural talent. Maybe then I could possibly tell him."_

Mel snorted, "Boy did he learn the hard way that guy, looks like Lloyd may not have been the only one with daddy issues looking at some of those other entries-" Willow looked up and glared at her. "Okay um… anyways, here's another interesting one."

 _"He left. He left not like a silent whisper of the wind like his mother, no, my son left like a hurricane that blew our home away. He is furious with me, and he has every right. I got his hopes up; I praised him and praised him even when he was unruly to the other children in their spars, not hesitating to beat the living lights out of them. All he wanted was to be believed in, to be special and loved and I just wanted a son, I wanted the best I wanted him to be special. He packed a bag and raved on about how he would prove he truly was the green ninja. He claimed he would find the last realm crystal that he read about in the study and prove that he was worthy of my praise and love. There is nothing I can do but pray he would come home. I should have told him. I should have been honest unlike how I was with my Sayu. Now they are both gone forever and I have just repeated a mistake."_

"We need to tell my parents… we need to tell them and show them this right now," Willow started shaking, feeling sick inside like she witnessed something horrible. She could picture it all though, every entry they were reading through was descriptive enough to imagine how horrible it was. _"No wonder Wu wouldn't talk about him."_

That was when they heard the footsteps. The girls knew they had to get out of there and fast, so they shoved everything back in and dashed out of the room, making a dive into the nearest room they could get in. They never got caught which they were thankful for as they waited for the person to leave.

"Come on!" Mel got up and pulled Willow along. "They all gotta know this!"

 **That's right, ANOTHER UPDATE. I figured since this one was pretty much all done, I should just post it and stuff. I also decided that since I'm not gonna make you all read The First Masters of Spinjitsu if you didn't wanna go digging for my hints that I would just throw in flashback-ish type entries and what not.**

 **Okay that's all I have to say for now, my brain is all jumbled and I'm tired, I have stuffs to do, same as usual. But thanks for reading! I'm glad you guys are enjoying this one! :D**

 **~Mar**


	4. Chapter 4

When Mel and Willow rushed in, trying to find somebody, they just happened to run in on Garmadon and Misako standing around some new kid they had yet to meet. Mel raised an eyebrow, "Um, what? We found a new kid? Sorry; dorms are full! Well… maybe you can squeeze him in the guys; there _are_ less of them-"

"No! This isn't another take in… it's Cole's brother!" Lloyd still was surprised about this one, of all people to show up next. "He never talked about a sibling… not even his dad actually come to think of it…"

"I'm the little sibling no one talks about; it's fine with me to be honest, my family's crazy and I already pretend I'm not related to my dad when other kids at my school ask about it," Cameron shrugged his shoulders.

Garmadon then noticed the girls looked out of breath and in some kind of state of shock. "You two okay? You look like you just ran a marathon." He looked back down at Cameron, wondering if they should just cut the introductions short for now and see what was so wrong. "Please tell me that the dragon didn't crap on the patio or something because I warned Lloyd about that a million times." He looked at his son who held his hands up.

"If the dragon did it, I have no control over it! I told you!"

Mel and Willow violently shook their heads. "NO! It has nothing to do with that! No dragon crap!"

"Okay… family meeting then, effective immediately," Misako snapped her fingers. "Cameron, get your clothes and belongings and you can go take a shower and settle in, you'll share Willow's room for now, it's too big for her anyways and there's a second bed in there as well."

The black haired boy got to his feet and bowed quickly. "Thank you!" he shouted and ran out, staring at Willow who stared right back, temporarily forgetting what was so wrong. "Guess I'm your roommate for a little while hehe." He walked past her.

The parents dragged Lloyd, Mel, and Willow into their own bedroom where they sat the girls down to find out what the matter was. "What happened then? What did you two do!?" The father asked, worried they had trashed something.

"We know who Morro is!" Mel started pretty hysterically going on right off the bat. "We know why Wu was agitated at you and stuff and yes we were listening in earlier and we snuck into his room and found old crap, but it wasn't just random old crap, it was old mementos and pictures and stuff and he had a girlfriend and they had a baby he didn't know about until years later and then that kid ran away and it's just ALL SCREWED UP!" He voice continued to escalate as she continued with her run on sentence.

The four stared at the seventeen year old like she was just talking gibberish now when she finally shut her mouth.

Willow sighed. "You can find the stuff for yourself in his room; he's been hiding it for years that Morro even existed obviously, but listen to this; he was the first candidate for Lloyd's job." She calmly tried to explain. "Wu had a son… which made me realize that you two are waaaay less of crappy parents than he was to this kid oh my gosh, you guys at least owned your mistakes and are flopping around trying to get me to stay here. You should read some of those things he wrote in his journal."

Garmadon flicked her ear promptly. "Like I would even dream of letting you just leave to run off all on your own! Even if you wanted to!?"

Misako ignored the cracks though as she covered her mouth, just thinking about this. "This is horrible… I can't believe Wu never told us about this! About a girlfriend, about a baby! Not one word to me when we found each again at the museum… and I thought he trusted me with everything." She shook her head, genuinely feeling horrible for this boy named Morro.

Garmadon on the hand, looked pissed off big time and Lloyd was trying to pull on his dad's arm because he knew he was going to demolish the other sensei for keeping it from him. "Dad!" he shouted angrily. "Getting mad at him won't solve anything! You know how uncle Wu is! You're just going to get more worked up and get nowhere! We gotta work on finding Sigan and Ruby!"

"He let his own child walk out! He's younger than you Lloyd! He's probably dead now too you know! Wu let his own son walk out and… I cannot believe he made him believe that he would do nothing but praise him and give him such an ego…" he shook his head and hugged Lloyd close. "What if that happened with me and you Lloyd? Or the rest of us and Willow?" He looked to his daughter. "What if we just let you two walk out on us those few opportunities you had to do it…"

Misako hugged Willow close and Mel just looked like she felt so bad for them all. She and her own siblings may have been adopted into this family like the other take-ins, but they will never have that special bond of turmoil like what the Garmadon family had with each other. That's when Misako instinctively pulled Mel into the hug with her daughter so she wouldn't feel so left out.

"I'm going to talk to him… I'll beat his ass in for it, I can promise you that," Garmadon quietly said, letting go of the blonde teenager and calmly walked back out through the door. "Now we might have a huge problem on our hands that's just all stemming from Wu… what are the odds?" He sounded rather sarcastic.

"When Cameron gets out of the bathroom, please show him where everything is… we're all going to have a nice long talk about what's going on now with the others…" Misako let Willow go first. "Thank you two for this… really. We won't punish you for sneaking into Wu's room; this was a very important thing to find out. It's probably going to be quite helpful in the long run."

Lloyd walked out next. "I guess I'll rally the troops to talk about the next move then… and make sure dad doesn't kill Wu and that Sky and Kai are filled in."

* * *

Ruby frowned, looking back down at the journal and back to Morro who was refraining from speaking with her, just sitting there with his eyes closed. "If this journal date says you should be like, twelve around when you died, how come you look like you're my age? I wasn't aware that ghosts could age." She raised an eyebrow.

This warranted a strange look from the ghost in question; no one really asked him that one before. He sneered a bit. "If you have to know, I used magic to make body older as a child… thinking that it would help give me more power to prove I was the green ninja and to actually be taken seriously."

The girl looked down; that title of the "green ninja" surely sounded familiar. She wasn't up to date on much news while at the boarding school, but she did remember when the land was plagued by the darkness and how someone, this green ninja saved them all and destroyed the Overlord.

 _"Hmm, I wonder who the real green ninja was then if it wasn't him…"_ She came out of her thoughts. "So um, why the realm crystal? Why were so bent on getting a hold of it? How was it going to help you prove that you were this special kid?"

Morro rolled his eyes. "Similar reasons your dad is looking for it I guess… but now, I also want to find it so that my realm can come forth and bring havoc on Ninjago and can destroy it for all the lives like me who were cursed to it… and to torture my old master as an amazing bonus." He looked away, voice laced with more contempt.

"Oh," was all Ruby could manage to say to that quite passionate statement. There was more silence that followed though. Why did her father have to leave her alone with this guy anyways? "So what did my dad say to you before he left exactly? He didn't say where he was going." She awkwardly asked another question.

 _"Dear gods do I hate kids…"_ Morro couldn't help but think right now. "If you have to know kid; he said he has an idea of where the crystal is gonna be. The last place I looked, and I actually mean the last place mind you, was the Caves of Despair and there might be some kind of clue there that lead to the actual location."

"Well that's good because my dad is a time ninja and can see possible futures and stuff, so maybe that's how he's going to try and find it; either that or he'll fine something!" Ruby nodded, looking through the book, smiling a bit. "Who was Wu? Was he this former master you had?" she casually asked.

Morro reflexively jerked at the sound of that name, realizing he must have written some hate filled entry about his former master.

"It says that you miss your home, your bed, training sessions; were you to be a ninja or something?" she blinked. "You called him sensei after all here in this section. It's amazing though that you left someone who let you down so hard and powered through it to prove him wrong even when you felt horrible, I think it was a pretty big step for you to-"

"Or maybe you can just shut up and drop it you brat!" Morro moved away from her angrily to be by himself. "I don't even understand why some good little girl like you is even helping a madman like Sigan anyway! Why the hell are you even here?!"

Ruby just tilted her head slightly. "The same people you must be after for doing you wrong, my father says that they killed my mother." Morro looked back at her, a bit surprised. "Please don't let my appearance fool you… I do wanna see those people suffering for both our sakes. I want everyone who pointed and laughed at me to suffer; even if that means I'm going to bring forth the apocalypse. My father says that it's only right to take justice into your own hands."

Morro kept staring at the pink eyes of the girl he deemed too sweet and good natured to truly help them destroy the world. The way she gave her little monologue even sounded a bit off, like she was reading a script, but the look in her eyes showed that she meant what she said, she wasn't being twisted into doing anything she didn't want to be a part of like how he thought she was. She believed her own words.

She was sixteen and supposedly some powerful demon who wanted revenge on the world for making fun of her, killing her mother, who knows if there was anything else, but perhaps they were actually more similar than not. But he now saw her in a new light, and maybe that's why she now seemed a bit scarier.

The ghost smirked a bit and patted the top of her head. "Well we seem to actually a few things in common after all girly. What do you guys even want to know about the realm crystal and what we can do with it?"

* * *

Skylar was too exhausted still to even open her eyes after the nurse came in saying she had a visitor to see her, something of which she debated about saying yes to, but she did anyways. The red head often wondered how Seliel could have delivered two babies within an hour and she was almost perfectly fine.

"Helloooo?"

The amber ninja's eyes flew open when she heard the familiar, melodic voice come. It was one she hadn't heard in quite a while actually. "Millie?" she then looked over to see the older woman standing near her bed. "What the hell are you doing here!? I thought you were all in the way in Spinjago with Clouse and the girls… it's kind of a drive."

"Kai managed to get a hold of me and told me what happened and I wanted to come see you and your new baby. We are family after all Sky," she kindly smiled at the new mother. "Heard it was really rough for you two though; at least the baby will be okay. I saw her on the way in by the way… she's beautiful and will grow up just fine I'm sure. What did you name her?"

The red head sat up as best she could, "Um, Jessica, Kai calls her Jesse though, her middle name's Nya though for Kai's sister," she smiled sadly. "I'm kind of surprised that he didn't want it to be Namiko personally." She looked down and smirked. "Maybe the next one…"

"Look at you already planning your second! But Jessica, of course I should have known you would have called her after Jess." Mille held her hand. "So when's the wedding anyways?"

"Ugh, I don't wanna talk about any of that now; I wanna get past this hurdle for starters… I'm sure Kai filled you in on what everyone else is doing right now while I'm stuck here doing nothing… right?"

"So I've heard of the silly mess," Millie nodded, remembering the brief description about the Sigan problem. "But I also came here because well, we actually moved; we're finding a place in Ninjago City right now. I just wanted to be closer and in the city and what not since I've been job hunting once again… and because..." she blushed a bit. "Well… I told Clouse last night… I'm pregnant again."

"That's great," Skylar started smiling more, especially when she came to a great idea that would surely help. "I… I own a whole apartment building my dad had with the company, perks of being heir to a noodle fortune I guess, but you guys can get a big place there, I promise you guys'll get a break on the place." She chuckled, though it hurt a bit.

"Oh sweetie, thank you so much, I honestly cannot believe you're Chen's daughter. He was such an evil man," she shook her head. She then pulled out her buzzing phone. "Oh; the girls are acting up and I'm being called in for assistance; I gotta go!" she kissed the younger's cheek. "And good luck to you all with the time ninja problem. You guys can do it, I know you can. I'll see you soon Sky and please don't hesitate to call me ever."

"Yea yea… and let's just see if we can solve this problem before Halloween gets here, heh," Skylar raised her hand to give a small wave goodbye and closed her eyes again. "I wish I was helping… not stuck here," she grumbled more, looking to the phone and debating about having Kai get in here so she could have someone to talk to for a while.

* * *

Wu turned around when his brother was coming up to him. He was just minding his own business, watching the children play, making sure no one would be getting hurt. "What's with the look?" he seemed interested.

"Shut up; I know about Morro." Garmadon continued to look pissed off. "I know _everything_."

"I told you that you could never know or understand; how the hell could you possibly have found anythi-"

"Mel and Willow told me." He cut the younger off. "They found your stash; they read your own writing, saw your pictures. They were freaking out so much when coming to Misako and I with it all. How could you do that your child Wu? Misako knew Lloyd was the green ninja, but she didn't fill his head with stories of being great and having that be the sole core of his life's purpose."

"Morro always acted like he owed me a huge, unpayable debt." Wu explained. "There was nothing I could do, I gave him purpose and he looked so happy-"

"You set him up to fall down whether you meant to do it or not; a good parent does not do that! You could have told him who his father was too you know, instead of lying to him for years. Yet you were deceptive." The older sibling's gaze was hard. "And Hatsu told us what Ruby can do Wu; she can talk to the dead… so guess what can happen since Sigan has his journal and probably wants some help?"

"Oh gods, she can summon him and he can actually help them face to face… which means he could come back and maybe try to hurt Lloyd…" The sensei covered his mouth when he came to the realization.

"Now you see the problem with making your only child run away and hate you and try to destroy the world just to spite you because you screwed up on a prophecy and jumped the gun on something VERY DELICATE!?" Garmadon shouted angrily that Wu was just getting this _now_.

"What are we going to do then about this?" The younger sibling sighed, looking back to the elder. "I still don't see how there's an ending where we figure Sigan's plot out, stop him, and make sure the realm crystal is never found all while ensuring Morro won't try to kill us."

Garmadon lowered his head. "The sad part is that I don't even have an answer to that one brother. I don't even know where to begin. All I do know is that we can't give up. We still have plenty of time to find them all."

* * *

Willow yawned as she walked into her room to get her pajamas on and head to bed. It had been a long day and the worst part was that it was very far from over. Hatsu had gone out, frantically trying to get any leads on where he daughter could be and what Sigan was going to make her do. For now, the ninjas' hands were all tied until she could bring back information; thank goodness that she still had underground connections.

When the brunette pushed the door open, she was greeted by a scream that made her nearly have a heart attack. "HEY! I THOUGHT I LOCKED THAT!" It sounded like it was Cameron and Willow pretty much jumped out of her skin now.

"Oh shoot I-" she had totally forgotten she would be sharing a room for at least a little while. Her pale face turned pink when she was staring at the new kid who looked equally embarrassed as he wrapped his towel around his shoulders more. "Hey, what's-" Her eyes wandered to his clothes on the bed.

"It's nothing… it's an undershirt," Cameron practically snapped at her as he stuffed the tank top like piece of clothing away in his bag. "Okay!?"

"Okay, okay… no more questions," Willow turned, looking totally away, still feeling embarrassed that she walked in like this. "It's just been a long day for me… not every day you find out more dark secrets your family hides from you."

"Sounded like it when you came running in like a crazy person earlier…" The black haired boy mumbled as he quickly slid his shirt on and grabbed a pair of sweatpants. "Okay, you can turn around now." He dropped the towel to the floor, kicking it aside. "You startled me was all; sorry I screamed at you."

"Sorry… again for just blindly coming in." Willow walked in, sitting on her own bed. "In case you don't know, my family is after a crazy guy who tried to kidnap me and your brother's kids few weeks ago," she started explaining, "and on Halloween, he like… I don't know; he wants to let hell loose or something and destroy the world; I guess it's the typical bad guy stuff."

"Sounds like it," Cameron snorted. "I kind of feel bad now just dropping in randomly on all of you; seems like it really is a big problem. I hope I can at least be a little bit of help; I'm an elemental master too you know!" He grinned. "I can control metal and stuff, though I can also control the earth like my brother. Turns out we had some metal master relative on my mom's side that I got it from."

"Cool, sounds like it could come in handy for sure, I'm an earth and nature master myself, I heard that our moms were cousins or something." Willow slipped under her blankets as she explained. Cameron followed as well in his own bed. "Well, it was nice to meet you Cam!" She yawned. "See you in the morning I guess."

"Night Willow!" He sounded rather happy as he turned off the lights for her and crawled in; it had been a while since he slept in a bed.

 **Okay, officially; my brain is fried hah this is what I get from trying to multitask too much with multiple projects I guess lol ((if you guys didn't know, I have a webcomic on comicfury based on The First Masters of Spinjitsu and chapter 2 will start in December, the 1st will be ending in less than a month and I'm flopping around trying to get more pages done... I'm 9 pages in and I want it to be at least 20 or more))**

 **So yea, 10/10 don't recommend stretching yourself out too much :))) Anyways, in regards to this chapter now, because like, ya know, I'm sure the constant complaint factor with the same old updates on my mental health gets old, shit will be getting real soon... hopefully... I may or may not have plans to through Ronin into this story since it is just my version of "Possession"... yes I will be forever using the Misako and Ronin siblings thing... probably until I die because if I'm going to go against canon like the pro I am at defiance, might as well have fun.**

 **Also, yaaay, Millie makes a reappearance! Her and Clouse are like, otp 5ever, like, super power couple, they could give Garmadon and Misako a run for their money I think. What do you guys think? (on that note... would anyone be interested in seeing more stories about them? Because... I've been developing idea, I know someone, months ago on my tumblr, asked if I could write stuff... if so, then feel free to suggest ideas)**

 **Okay, I'm legit tired now lol I'm happy to hear so many of you have been enjoying Willow's presence in this new leg of the series! Maybe I'll add her into The Amulets? ((still need to revise the last chapter I wrote for it! Someone help boost my motivation)) Lol alright, good night guys and I'll see you around soon! :)**

 **~Mar**

 **ps, I can't believe I forgot to say anything, okay guys, Cameron is a transboy, totally forgot to say that. No one really knows other than Cole obviously and he kind of opens up to Willie about it and they are actually going to be super best friends if you can't tell by my A-plus set up here... k, that's all I wanted to say about that, but, yea, it canon.**


	5. Chapter 5

Hatsu frantically swooped in through the second level window of the training room, right in the middle of one of Garmadon's lessons. This caused the biggest disturbance of all time thus far in the day, because all of the children dropped their fake weapons to oogling at the winged woman who wasn't really giving them the time of day she was so preoccupied with her news delivery.

"I'm so sorry for interrupting like this but I couldn't find anyone else right now," she started off talking to Garmadon. "But I think I found where they are!" she folded her hands together. After two and half weeks, a lead finally came up on where their time ninja was hiding out with her daughter, and she was partially relieved, partially more distraught that they can't exactly do much to help the situation.

"Halloween is about two weeks away now, they're on the move alright," Zane sat back in his seat, folding his arms. "I'm guessing they're beginning to rush around to make it in time because they obviously appear to not have this realm crystal yet."

"I was thinking the same thing," Skylar nodded; she was finally back home with Kai and their baby girl Jesse who was sleeping soundly with Billie and Rose down the hall. "So they've been hiding out in Spinjago this whole time then. Of course."

"I know! My little Ruby was there the whole time and I didn't even think of it! It's where I lived with her until I put her into that school," Hatsu covered her face, starting to cry. "I don't know how I can help now though; I just want my baby back and away from that psychopath!"

"And we'll get her back Hatsu," Cole assured, sympathizing because he knew how she felt, "and we'll throw Sigan back in jail where he belongs too! You won't have to see him ever again and we'll make sure he'll never get out again."

Nya dropped a book down on the table. "Okay so the legend is that last realm crystal was buried with the First Spinjitsu Master in an unknown, unmarked tomb somewhere in the world." She sighed. "But according to you guys; you were the ones that buried him at the location of the old monastery not long before Lloyd was born; right?"

"That is correct, right next to our mother," Wu confirmed. "If he was moved after that, it's not something we were ever made aware of." He looked to his brother and sister in-law who agreed with him.

"Well, what if he's still at the old monastery site like you guys think he is?" Jay perked up a bit, starting to think more about it. "It was a huge mountain; maybe there were some hidden caverns and stuff he was moved to way underneath where the old place was. You guys said that there were old followers and stuff of his; maybe they wanted to keep everything safe and moved it without you guys knowing so that it could be better kept a secret?"

Pixal leaned in more, thinking about this theory the lightning ninja was presenting. "It is plausible that there could be something that would give a hint to the tomb." She started searching her databanks now for information to support this theory. "I say it is worth a shot to poke around to see," the android smiled. "According to what Morro's journal said, he found _something_ in the Caves of Despair which was the last entry before he must have died in there."

"Well, let's go and see if we can dig something up before our bad guys can get to it…" Kai sighed, getting up, until his sister stopped him and his girlfriend right away. "Oh come on!"

"You guys are still pretty weak and in recovery! You heard the doctor when you got sprung from the hospital! No dangerous missions for a little while longer!" She smaller girl scolded. "You're to stay here and take care of your daughter and get more rest!" She pointed.

Kai raised an eyebrow as he glared at the younger sister who he did not appreciate taking orders from. "Oh yea? Well you're pregnant ya know! That means that you can't go either!"

"I'm not even three full months yet Kai! Doesn't count! I can still kick Garmadon ass if I wanted to!" she snapped back in retaliation.

"HA! Like to see you try that one!" Garmadon loudly shouted from the other room.

Jay raised his hand a little. "I-I would feel better if you stayed here actually… with them…" His wife groaned as she knew that she would have to stay behind to make him feel better, or else Jay would do nothing but over protect and question her if she was okay and not focus on finding the crystal.

"Besides, you can watch our kids for us," Seliel patted her friend's shoulder with a bit of a cocky smile, happy that she at least would be going along, she had healed up rather quickly from having her own children and was ready to get back into it.

"Stupid baby… why did I have to let Jay get my pregnant now of all times?!" Nya started grumbling as she walked away, arms folded tightly as she went to try and find something worthwhile to do.

* * *

So the members that would be going to the Caves of Despair was Jay, Cole, Seliel, Zane, Pixal and Lloyd, surely they would be enough even if they ran into Sigan and needed to fight back. It naturally brought back memories being at the old cave system, for Cole, Jay, and Zane especially; this was the site of the first weapon and their first mission as a team, finding Cole's former golden scythe that Wu hid away from Garmadon along with first learning Spinjitsu.

"Some things still haven't changed I guess about this place," Jay looked around nervously, remember running for their lives from a very pissed off dragon and skeletons the last time they walked through the caves. "To be honest, it still gives me the creeps."

Zane looked back to Pixal whose green eyes lit their surrounds. "So, can you pull anything up from the journal?"

"Scanning now for keywords right now, please be patient, I believe he drew something like a map; I'm looking for that page currently," the android looked around as her eyes glowed brighter, showing she was processing data.

"Thank goodness Pix had a digital copy of that journal that was scanned and stuff before it was put away in that museum place," Seliel turned her flashlight on as they were progressing through the darkening tunnel. "Makes our job a lot easier."

Pixal promptly ran ahead of the ninja, beckoning them to follow her through the caves. "I take it she knows where she's going then," Lloyd quickly followed her with a hopeful smile. "Wait up Pixal!"

"Don't forget to watch your backs guys," Cole warned them. "Who knows where they'll be at this point. I just really hope they haven't been here already or aren't stalking us." He looked over his shoulder, still worried.

* * *

Ruby trailed behind her father, arms folded as she was clearly left out of the conversation with Morro who were both enthusing about how much they hated Ninjago and what not, you know, typical bad guy conversations. She still had a bunch of questions about all of this and what she would have to do and why her of all people.

Before she could even open her mouth, it seemed Sigan had anticipated her doing this. "There is one place that is the weakest point in the whole realm; that is where we'll be going." He looked down at her with a blank face. "Ever hear about the river Styx that leads into Hell?" Ruby shrugged a bit, she never knew what that meant, but had read it as a part of a mythology class she took.

"Well; then, there's a town on the water by the same name. And I was more than a hundred percent sure that this would be the place you could shatter the whole thing and the realms could collide." Morro looked quite proud of himself for figuring that one out. "Of course, there's another reason why we need to go to that town… I have a friend who's got this mortal who owes him a big ass debt. So he said I could go collect it for him if I ever got out of my realm."

Ruby raised an eyebrow when he said that. "Um, why do we need this guy? Won't we already have everything we'll need anyways?"

Morro chuckled, "Not quite, there's still an artifact that you're going to need kid if your dad is right about you. This guy is a professional thief at that."

"I'm older than you… Why are you the one calling _me_ kid?" she mumbled under her breath, afraid if he heard what she said.

"Just move it!" The time ninja snapped at the two teenagers, quickly walking ahead of both of them. "You think I have the time to waste? The Night of the Dead is less than two weeks away! You want to miss your chance? If this doesn't happen this year, then we'll be caught before we'll ever get another chance!"

The ghost smirked though when his accomplice said this, "Well, maybe you two will be locked up, I'm a ghost, I can't be detained so easily and I don't care if I have to use the realm crystal myself."

* * *

Seliel shined the light on the wall so that the others could read it better. "Well… anybody got any ideas? Because I don't read chicken scratch," She turned to look at Zane and Pixal who surely could be able to translate for them.

"Yeaaaa, it looks like the same text that was on the Green Ninja scroll and you were able to read that Zane," Jay pointed out, taking a closer look. "Why the hell would this be in here though…?" He then started to pull at the collar of his ninja robe. "Is it just me, or is it hot in here?" He started looking around.

"I think it's just you, now shhh; just let Zane do his thing," Lloyd waved him off, waiting for the ice ninja to explain what it meant.

Zane frowned and looked back to his friends with an answer, "It appears to say something along the lines of _"Go back to the beginning, like treasure of old is where it's hidden"._ Hmmm," His translation was met with a confusing set of stares from the other ninja.

"Well that was helpful," Lloyd scoffed. "Leave it to my grandfather to give us something useless… mom and dad were probably right about him," he trailed off. "Well, then again… wasn't it speculated that the tomb could have been at the old monastery?" He then considered.

"Hey guys, it's really starting to get hot in here-"

"Not now Jay! We're onto something I think! No one cares if you're getting a little warm in here; deal with it!" Cole snapped off as the others almost huddled together, swapping ideas.

Seliel wiped her forehead when she started to sweat as well, "Guys, I think Jay's right and it is getting warmer in here…" the phantom ninja looked back.

"THANK YOU!" Jay shouted.

Pixal's glowing eyes scanned the room, "Temperatures are in fact steadily rising," She quickly turned when there was a low rumble, everyone going dead quiet. "There's a lava cavern below us and it's acting up!" The robot seemed look almost legitimately scared.

"Then let us go now!" Zane grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her long so fast her legs could barely keep up. "How long until it blows?"

"Chamber will be flooded and spread to the tunnels in a matter of twenty seconds! We will never make it out!" She looked even more distressed when her sensors were going off more in her own head. "We're all doomed…" she cried.

Cole looked behind him and stomped his foot down, a wall of earth rising up and blocking the way behind them when the sound of cracking rocks echoed. "We still doomed or did I just save our butts?" He asked, looking proud of himself.

"That'll work to at least buy us another minute I suppose," Pixal's eyebrows rose. "Though I do not anticipate it will stop merely because of that; you just stalled it."

"Then pick up the pace because I don't wanna find out!" Lloyd and Jay started running faster than the other four, right past the others until they could see the faint light that meant the entrance was just ahead. "Go summon your dragons and we'll head for the monastery right now! No time to go back home and tell Wu and my parents! I'll just call them or something!"

"Agreed there!" Seliel panted, body aching. "I don't know why I didn't think there would be this much running, we always run," she started slowing down a bit as the guys summoned the elemental dragons, Pixal and Seliel hopping on both Zane and Cole's.

"To our old home then…" Cole sighed and pulled on the reins of his dragon, veering to the right. "It's been a really long time…"

"About five years ago, it was when we first met Lloyd and the Hypnobrai," Jay sighed, remembering how horrible it felt to return from their mission to burned wood and ashes. Yea they hadn't lived in there quite a full year, but it was their first home together. "Wow, it really has been a long time then."

They had the Bounty for a long time after that of course, and now the new monastery with a big family, but there was almost this ominous feeling between the long time friends about returning back there after so long.

Zane looked down, sighing, "No time to get sentimental about all of this, we have to make sure the theory is correct and get that crystal before Sigan does."

* * *

Morro phased through the old front door, lock turning with a loud thunk, and then opened with him on the other side with a proud smile. "Told you it comes in handy; now be quiet, people are still out and about at this hour and we don't want trouble or attention." He gestured for the father and daughter to come in.

"So this guy's a thief eh? Looks like some kind of two bit old man lives here if you ask me," Sigan looked around the old pawn shop, not impressed with anything he saw; it appeared to be piles of old junk only stupid tourists would buy.

Out of the shadows, a kunai went flying by Ruby's head, making her squeal in horror of almost being impaled by it. Sigan easily dodged the second one that came and placed a hand on her shoulder as if it was some kind of attempt to console her.

"I take it you know why I'm here then?" Morro called almost tauntingly. "Soul Archer sent me ya know… I would hate to tell him how unsporting you are."

"The deal was I only talk to him and pay him! Not his lousy friends!" A shaky voice snapped back from the dark room.

"Deal changed; so get used to it!" The ghost took another step; a knife passed through him this time. "You wanna lose your soul? Or better yet… how about we kill him again and you won't get him back? Huh? Maybe we can settle your debt like that!"

"Wait… ugh, I hate dealing with you ghosts!" The man who the voice belonged to stepped out into the open, hands up, "always making things too hard."

"Then maybe you never should have summoned one of us to make the deal in the first place," Morro smirked. "So Ronin; you going to come quietly and play nicely with all of us or what?"

"Fine," he sighed. "What do you need from me?"

"You're going to go to a little known place called the Garmadon Monastery and get something really, really important for us so we can destroy the world." Sigan spoke for Morro this time.

Ronin didn't look too keen on this now. "G-Garmadon?"

 **It's only been a week since I updated? Huh, felt way longer... then again, I've had a reaaaaaally long week... also, look at that Ronin's back... yea, lose that jerk sO MUCH. But yea, finally I'm working more on this again because a bunch of stuff cleared up for me now so yea, phew. I promise I'll finish this before Halloween... or at least on Halloween... maybe Ronin will be in my Christmas special.. ya know, it's gonna be Cole and Kai's kids' first Christmas this year. I gotta do something for that. ((Even if I never really right adventures for this story line, you can bet your butt I wanna still do some kind of Christmas thing because this story line is too good to do that for))**

 **Also, yea, notice how I'm not making the tomb at the bottom of the freaking ocean in an ice cave that makes 0 sense, yea, screw that, another change for the better in my Possession arc :)**

 **Anways, thanks for reading guys, I don't really have too much to say, but again thanks, also for being so nice and like, encouraging me to take my time and stuff because of my easily overwhelmed brain, you guys are honestly so nice and I hope to get another chapter uploaded real soon :)**

 **~Mar**


	6. Chapter 6

Lloyd wasted no time in jumping off of his dragon he was in such a rush to get back on the ground, though he skidded to a halt when he came upon the remains of the old monastery his parents once called home. "Guys… I… don't think it's here." He swallowed hard.

"Oh no…" Cole breathed when he, Jay, and Zane saw some kind of hole dug into the ground where the courtyard they had trained in once stood. "Oh no no no." He kept shaking his head as he looked down into it. "It was here alright…"

"You don't mean that-" Seliel covered her mouth.

"Yep!" The ninja and Pixal turned around quickly to see the time ninja, leaning against part of the old gate. "Come now, you wouldn't think I'd be smarter than all of you? I once came here, a very long time ago, back when you parents were mere children," he pointed to Lloyd. "I came to steal the golden weapons, but failed, and that's when I became the time ninja! But of all things, I came back to take something even better than I could have possibly imagined!"

"Where is it!?" Cole pulled his scythe from the harness on his back. "And don't try your stupid little trick with the sleep thing because we won't fall for it a second time!"

Sigan shrugged his shoulders and casually looked at the stolen journal. "Well, I hid it away while I made other plans so I don't have it on me at the moment I'm afraid!" He smirked, throwing the old book at their feet. "And you can have that back, I don't need it anymore. Come on kids, let's go and wait for the next part to play out!"

Morro and Ruby poked out to see the ninja. Lloyd's eyes widened when he saw Sigan and Hatsu's daughter. "Oh my gosh it really is Ruby…" he took a step forward. "Ruby! It's… it's me! Lloyd Garmadon!" he held a hand out to her, but she just stared at him. "Remember? From Darkly's? My dad was king of the Underworld during that tournament we all took part in! I got expelled afterwards?"

"Lloyd?" she whispered, staring at his ninja robes. "Y-you're the green ninja?"

The ghost perked up right away when he heard her ask that, then noticed his green ninja robes. "You," he pointed to the blonde who jumped back a bit. "You're the brat that Wu gave the green gi to!? How pathetic!"

Lloyd shrank back a little bit, suddenly afraid of getting his butt kicked by this guy, though he shook his head and tried to remember that this guy was also alleged his cousin… maybe he should be the one to deliver that news? "You might not believe me," he started, "but Wu is sorry for what happened," he held his hand up. "You didn't need to prove anything to him, he loved you Morro."

"Lies! He promised me so much just to take it all away from me! You took everything away from me too! If I couldn't be the green ninja then I was worthless to him! I ought to destroy you!"

"Aah!" Lloyd hid behind Cole and Seliel now. "I swear I didn't do anything or had anything to do with it! And Wu, my uncle, regrets letting you go instead of trying to set things straight! He even regrets letting your mom go!"

Sigan looked moderately interested in where this was going; he had time to kill and needed to distract as many of the able bodied ninja as he possibly could anyways. "Don't you get with the Garmadon brat is trying to tell you kid?" he yawned, asking Morro. "Wu knew your mother the whole time," he chuckled a bit, pulling his daughter back more. "Wu lied to you again, he knew your father; he was your father!"

"It was to protect you from-"

"I never needed protecting in the first place!" Morro huffed. "I never needed anybody but myself!"

"My mom did the same thing to me and my sister when we were little!" Lloyd tried to reason. "Please don't help him! Maybe you'll be put to rest and you won't have to go back to the Cursed Realm if you just let this go and-"

"Shut up!" The ghost screamed at his cousin. "I made a vow to prove I was the green ninja! That I was the special one! And now I'm going to destroy Ninjago and avenge everyone who your so called family hurt and ruined! I don't how great you think you are wearing that stupid robe!"

Lloyd looked to Ruby who looked away, like she was about to cry now. "Ruby… come back… your mother misses you; she's worried sick." Seliel cut the green ninja off, thinking she could be more helpful.

The sixteen year old blinked when the phantom ninja had said that. "S-she's dead though," she breathed. "She was killed… b-by your masters or whatever," she now clung to Sigan's arm, looking up at him for answers. "R-right daddy?" She actually found that she wanted to believe him.

The ninja all blinked. "What did you tell her?!" Zane asked the time ninja. "Hatsu has been running around nonstop for months looking for you Ruby! She tried to get to you before he did so she could warn you about how he was going to use you!"

"Yea! She regrets ever believing in him and not realizing what a psycho he is sooner! Your dad's using you big time! He doesn't really care!" Jay added in.

Sigan pulled her closer. "Who is she going to believe? The people who took Hatsu away from her? Or _me_ ; her father who's been caring for her when no one else would have? I didn't even throw her in a school like Hatsu did; I took her out so she wouldn't have to be away from her home and family."

"What a liar," Cole genuinely was surprised how blatant he was being.

"You're keeping her away from her proper family who just wants what is best for her." Pixal held her head up, trying to look the little girl in the eye. "You may think you are doing good in your own right, but destroying the worlds will do absolutely nothing for you when you have no purpose of seeking whatever mad revenge your father is after."

Sigan was still smirking though despite the look of consideration on his daughter's face as he leaned closer to whisper something in her ear.

"What're you smirking at you psycho? She knows that you're what's wrong in this picture!" Jay looked more confident. "Right Ruby?!"

Morro continued to glare at Lloyd though which made the poor boy more uncomfortable. "Because you idiots really underestimate people like us it seems. You don't think he would have had a backup plan if she decided she wasn't going to cooperate?"

Ruby's pink eyes suddenly burned bright red when Sigan stood back up. "Your parents would remember that Hatsu was a powerful demon, and there is always one way or another to make a demon work for you if you know the secret to doing it. Hatsu just was a harmless little fly when I picked her up on the street, even for times between missions we would go on… and just ask your parents, she was a savage little fighter when she picked up a weapon."

The ninja raised their weapons when Ruby started silently walking closer to them, not knowing what she was going to do now that she had an obvious shift in temperament.

"Different clans of demons have different incantations the people of old Ninjago would use on them to make them do their bidding, be their personal assassins and guards and what not, so it would make sense that I could do the same to Ruby as I did to her mother to get her to fight for me and get her so attached and loyal." He took a step back. "Go on sweetie, do whatever you want to them, then we'll return and have everything we'll need to bring an end to the realms!"

The now silent girl pulled out a ninja-to from her jacket and seemed to calculate how she was going to do this.

"Oh also, if you wanna be the green ninja, you can have him Morro, it'll be one less person for her to kill. I'm sure he'll be useful if you possess him, maybe you can trick people into getting what you want, that kid's like a rock star now," the older man leaned over to Morro.

"Great, now we gotta fight a bunch of kids," Cole pushed Pixal behind him being she didn't have the skills in which to fight like them. "Don't hurt Ruby, it's like when Nya got possessed on the Dark Island, just bring her down, I don't wanna have to tell her mother that we mauled her daughter!"

Lloyd leaned over to Seliel, "D-did he just say possessed?"

* * *

Skylar let out a long, tired breath as she sat on the porch of the monastery, watching the kids play, feeding her daughter. "Hey guys, I think lunch is almost ready if you wanna head back in?" She called out.

"Awesome! I'm starving! Come on Willow! Let's get there before the others!" Cameron was the first to run over, pulling Willow by the hand as she was happily running alongside, laughing even.

Nya jumped out of the way of the two younger kids, surprised by their abruptness, "Wow, they became best friends pretty fast, huh?" She looked over her shoulder. "I put Rose and Billie down for a nap and they seem to be doing well; how's Jessica?" she sat next to her future sister in-law.

The red head fixed her shirt and patted the baby's back when they were done. "Doing better every day," she yawned. "Here," she passed her daughter to Nya who smiled at the little girl that belonged to her brother and his girlfriend. "Wow, she has your eyes," she chuckled when the red haired baby opened her turquoise colored eyes.

"Eh, whatever," she looked away, sadly smiling. "Ironically she does look like my mom," she laid back on the ground. "Kai hasn't proposed to me you know… after everything? Are you sure he's gonna do it? I'm starting to feel weird about it now."

Nya frowned, thinking about that. "Well, he may be a ladies' man and a huge flirt, but he's been obsessed with you since the day he met you on the boat," she shrugged her shoulders. Maybe he's just scared; you know that Kai's a huge chicken."

"Okay, true…" Skylar trailed off, wondering if would hear that from inside. "Maybe I'm just looking too hard; he's not all that deep and maybe he's just waiting until everything's okay again." She reasoned with herself. "Well, come on, I'm hungry and I smelled miso cooking in there."

Nya helped her friend up, but waiting to go inside. She didn't quite know why, but she felt like the place was being watched. By who, she didn't know, but something was rather wrong for sure. Instead of lingering, she retreated to the dining room as well, forgetting about it.

* * *

"She's very skilled for a kid!" Cole rolled out of the way.

"Yea but her whole disappearing and reappearing thing is pissing me off!" Seliel growled. "That's my thing!" Shame she didn't have her smoke abilities at peak performance yet. "Jay; behind you!" she shouted and pointed to the blue ninja.

Before a hit could be landed, Pixal's fingers had slid together as her hand shifted into a sharp sword like weapon, smacking the knife away and kicking Ruby down like it was no big deal. "She is a slippery one."

"T-Thanks…" Jay swallowed, surprised that the android saved him.

"A pleasure Jay," she nodded once. "But I fear we should look after Lloyd though! Morro really seems to giving him a hard time!" She pointed to the poor green ninja.

Morro was throwing all the wind he had to Lloyd who couldn't even fight because he was preoccupied with shield himself and standing his ground so that he wouldn't get blown off the mountainside. "Come on! I thought you were some all powerful ninja!" he shouted at him.

"Leave me alone!" Lloyd shouted over the next gust of wind. "For the love of the gods I thought I was done with the insane family crap when Willow agreed to stay!" He cried out. "GUUUUUYS!" He was pretty much begging for help at this point.

"Oh I'm not gonna kill you like how your friends will be killed by little Ruby… I will be the green ninja Lloyd, by any means necessary," Morro smirked wide as he turned invisible.

Lloyd felt a shiver run up his spine when it felt like something passed through him, but he knew what the ghost was trying to do with him. "AH! Dude! Get out of my body!" he shouted, twitching a bit as he fought to control his body.

"Ooh, your girlfriend's pretty cute from these memories Lloyd; I wonder if she'll like me better… as long as I possess you though, I'm certain she'll make out with me in the movies too hehe!"

"Hey!" he shook his head more. "Those are private moments!" Lloyd held his hands over his mouth, being Morro was controlling it as well and didn't want anything else more embarrassing to be said in front of the others.

"I KNEW IT!" Jay screamed.

"If you dare speak of this to anyone else I'll end you-!" Lloyd growled.

"Cute, but he'll never go through with it, he likes you people too much," Morro cut him off. "Now, if you're done fighting, maybe we can get down to business and I can destroy the world on time." Lloyd didn't seem to have much to say now. "Now…" he dusted himself off, "I- HEY!"

Lloyd had actually kicked the master of wind out of his body. "I said get out!" He proceeded to shudder, rubbing his arms and chest that felt strongly tingly. "Eew, that's so weird… I feel so violated!" he jumped away from Morro, whipping his sword out.

Zane tossed his shurikens through the air, grazing Ruby's cheek. She flinched a bit and spread her wings like she was going to charge at the, "I get the feeling they are nothing but a distraction for us," he warned the others. "Pixal; we'll hold them off, please call the monastery and warn them that something might happen."

"Of course," she retreated behind the five. Sigan's glowing eyes followed the robot and grimaced. _"Well, I guess if Ronin did his job right, he would have gotten out already."_

* * *

Kai smiled a bit when Skylar passed the baby to him. He was still pretty awkward with holding her; the fire ninja wasn't exactly the perfect parent, but Nya got a kick out of seeing him get all nervous when his daughter would whimper and cry at him. It was quite obvious who Jessica preferred though, and it wasn't exactly him, she took far better to girls.

"Hey," he noticed his sister looked to be deep in thought. "What's up with you?" He readjusted his hold on the baby.

"Hmm?" she looked up at him, blinking until she registered what he asked. "I'm fine; guess I'm just worried about the others out there is all, we haven't really heard anything from them and I just want them to be okay," she shrugged her shoulders, brushing it off as she walked into the kitchen.

Suddenly, the sound of shattering glass was heard, followed by some thumps and a crash, sending the kids into a full blown freak out mode, knowing it wasn't any of them who could have been the cause of the crashes.

"Sit down all of you!" Misako ran in, shouting over the kids. "I'm sure it was just the cats or… who am I kidding? Come on," She sighed, throwing a dishrag on the counter and went to find the source of the noises, followed immediately by Wu.

"I think it was in here," the sensei told her, slowly opening the door to the room they used to hold all the books and scroll things Misako worked with and used like her own little office. "There you go," he gestured to the man sitting under a pile of books and some boxes.

"Oh crap."

"RONIN!" Misako practically screamed out of rage and partial surprise.

 **I honestly spent so much time on this one, like, I've been doing pretty much nothing but this chapter for the past 2 days because I knew I had to push myself to get through this part to continue on with the stuff I REALLY wanted to get to... Does it seem a bit rushed? I feel it's good, but I can be biased. Like, I rechecked and all that like, 5 times and I felt it was ready... But yea, you think Ruby would go back if she realized her dad was crazy? Hell no! I need her to be bad still lol**

 **Anyways, yaaay, Ronin's NOW officially gonna be a player in the story, last chapter was just my lil intro for him. And ps; he's still as gay as I was making him in "In Another World" if you didn't catch some of the dialogue in the last chapter lol -u- Also, expect more Willow and Cameron, they're BFFs now, no stopping me there guys!**

 **Alrighty, well, I honestly hope you're enjoying the story and thank you so much for reading! I'll see you all later :) If you excuse me, I have to go work on my Overwatch Halloween costumes now...**

 **~Mar**


	7. Chapter 7

"It's not what it looks like!" The man who was obviously breaking into the place shouted at the smaller woman who just folded her arms, about ready to kick his butt she was so disappointed in him. "Okay… maybe it is," he coughed. "DERRICK! Why the hell did you let go of me when I was opening the window!? I fell right in and now look what happened!"

"Derrick?" Wu and Misako blinked when he said the name, they were unaware he had an accomplice after all these years… personally they thought Ronin was far too greedy and irritating for anyone to want to be around him.

"Oh! Sorry babe," Another man poked his head through and chuckled a bit, looking somewhat regretful of his mistake. "I saw this really cute black cat and she cuddled right up to me! It was adorable! Do you know they have cats all over this place?! It's like heaven!" He glanced up at the other two in the room. "Ooooh… you were supposed to do this quietly… weren't ya?"

"YES YOU IDIOT!"

"Who's he!?" Misako pointed to the other man called Derrick, wondering just what that exchange was all about. "Boy you better start running or else I'll throw you both into the lake and drown you!" she could have screamed but didn't want the others to freak from the other room.

"I CAN EXPLAIN!" Ronin shouted louder, trying to shield himself in the case she would swat him.

"I'm sure you can," Wu scoffed at the claim.

"I have to do this or else they're gonna kill him again!" Ronin pointed to his alleged partner.

"Who!?" The other two asked.

Ronin slouched with a sigh. "We're both dead men anyways whether or not you listen, Derrick; get in here so we can try to appeal to these losers," he grumbled more.

"You must be Roro's sister, hi!" The darker haired one jumped into the small study. "I guess you already know my name." He scratched his cheek, looking down at poor, grumpy Ronin.

"Roro?" Misako stifled a laugh as their intruder's face turned bright red from obvious embarrassment. "You never let me call you that ever when we were kids. Why does he get to call you that? Hmmm?"

"Oh!" Ronin started hitting the much taller man's leg. "Don't you dare embarrass me anymore than you already have in front of them! Do you realize what Morro's gonna do now that we obviously can't get him that scroll thing!?" Derrick blinked. "You're gonna die again man!"

Derrick slowly nodded as he came to an understanding, "Good point; I didn't quite think about that one when I got distracted," he picked the shorter one up, cuddling him closer, "Sorry I dropped you honey."

"Put me down! What did I _just_ say about embarrassing me anymore in front of my kid sister!?"

"But you're so tiny babe; you never told me that you're as tiny as your sister! I think it's so cute to be honest! And you guys even look alike!" The taller cooed at the angrier thief who continued to swat and shout at him to cut it out.

Wu turned away, "Well I have even more questions now than I did a moment ago." He looked at Misako, "What are you going to do with them?" He glanced back at them.

The gray haired woman slumped with a sigh; her son and most of the others were out right now, probably running into certain trouble and now she has to play games with her estranged brother and his now assumed boyfriend. "Call Garmadon; I'd like to hear about all of the ridiculous trouble you must have thrown yourself into since you left."

The quite obvious couple looked at her, ceasing their talking. "Oh shit; you're husband!? He's gonna murder me before Sigan and Morro can!" Ronin squealed, clinging to Derrick tighter now instead of demanding to be set down again.

Before they could leave the study, Michaela had knocked on the door; phone in hand. "Pixal called and told us to tell you they're being held up at the old monastery or something… oh and that something bad might happen here…? Or do you already have that part covered?" She looked past, wondering why there were two odd men in their house.

Misako sighed and patted her shoulder, "Yea; I think we have that last part covered; as far as any trouble they others are in, I have faith they'll make it out just fine and get back here ASAP," she took the phone from the girl and prompted her to go back outside with the others. "I'll explain what the crash was in a minute; go finish your lunch please."

Her green eyes flicked back to the caught thieves who looked downright terrified of her now. "Mimi… um… oh geez- not the face-!"

"Move it." She pointed out the door, no longer putting up with anymore crap than she was already dealing with that day.

* * *

"Jay! Jay!" Seliel shook the blue ninja by the shoulders. "Dude; come on! She literally just scratched your face! You're far from dying man," she gripped her chain scythe and pushed the freckled man in front of her. "We need to get out of here guys before Jay does from a drop of blood," she looked back at Cole and Zane. "Ideas? Because at this point; Sigan's just stalling- where did he go?"

The group had just noticed that Ruby was the only one who was there fighting them off; even Morro was nowhere in sight anymore.

"Well we can't just bring her back like this; we gotta find a way to reverse it!" Lloyd gestured to the girl who had once been a good friend to him. "And we also can't catch her and tie her up so that's out of the question… not that we could hurt her or anything, because she could seriously hurt us!"

"I advise that you use your spirit dragons now," Pixal suggested, still hiding behind the others and doing her best to take care of any flanking she could try. "Ruby still appears to have plenty of stamina left in her from what my readings are getting," she scanned the demon's body, "It's almost as if whatever Sigan did to her boosted her functions… then again; she is not exactly human either so I couldn't possibly know for sure."

"Don't have to tell me twice! I am outta here!" Jay shouted. "I'd like to live to see my kid be born you know!"

* * *

The two thieves that were caught sat on the couch while everyone else, minus Misako, stared at them; she was pacing around, trying to understand what was going on while her husband had a death glare at the two men, not moving, but obviously premeditating on killing them.

"Soooo he's my uncle?" Willow asked, breaking the silence, pointing to Ronin.

Garmadon glanced at her. "We don't talk about Uncle Ronin sweetie… ever. Especially his ridiculous life choices that got him kicked out in the first place."

"Well excuse me if I decided I was interested in men as opposed to-"

"Not the gay thing! The stealing and going behind everyone's back and nearly getting me killed thing!" Garmadon cut him off right away, looking at him like he was stupid. "Frankly your boyfriend looks too nice to even engage in that garbage so I have my doubts he's even real."

Derrick had his knees together, looking around. "I came to do this with him because he said you had cats here and that he was scared of you so I had to be there for him for moral support while he robbed you blind." He openly admitted to the older man.

Ronin held his hands to his face. "Alright long story short was, like, we met around… what? Twenty years ago? During that stupid little war with the Serpentine where I… did some underhanded stuff," he coughed, quickly moving on, "And he helped me get through the whole "having my eyeball gouged out by Clouse" thing and then we kind of went into business officially together and became partners."

"And then I got killed!" Derrick threw in next.

"Honey; please, I'm getting to that part," Ronin held his hand out. "I… we uh… well, by partners, it was more than business partners," he started mumbling, feeling embarrassed again just explaining all of this, "but yea, I was pretty desperate let's say aaaaand… made a really bad deal to get his life back," he grinned, but it was vacant of expression, he was just hoping Misako wouldn't kill him. "Like; oh my gosh I made a deal with an actual devil kind of bad choice."

"And so Morro is calling in the debt you owed for that little deal you made? That's what this thing was about?" Nya asked the next question. Both men nodded as an answer, "Well at least this seems to explain a lot; and they never once talked about you. Like, my brother is stupid, but not to the point where I'm embarrassed to even say I'm related to him."

Skylar snorted, and Kai just registered that his own sister just insulted him. "Hey! Not cool!"

"Mind explaining why you broke our window though? What's the debt involving? I think we have a right to know now." Garmadon inquired.

The bounty hunter crossed his legs and shrugged, "Some scroll thing you guys supposedly had. It was an unmarked thing and had to do with the realm crystal or something about the First Spinjitsu Master. I don't know, Sigan just said he needed it for his kid."

"That's not in the study though; that's in my closet," Wu told his brother. "Father left it to me for safe keeping; I had no idea it would have to do with the realms or anything; I thought it was some old history writing from centuries ago."

"Sweet! Can we have it then?"

"NO!" Everyone shouted at the two who's hopeful faces dropped.

Skylar scoffed, "Are you two insane? We can't just hand over that kind of thing if Sigan is hell bent on destroying the world with it! Who cares about your stupid debt when the state of Ninjago is actually in the balance!? Along with those other realms too!"

Ronin hugged his boyfriend, "Hey! Don't be mean! You have any idea what it's like to watch someone die right there in your arms kid!? Or even come close to death? Much less have it be your partner!?"

Kai and Skylar exchanged glances, he had them there it seemed so they shut their mouths. "I can't deny I wasn't desperate myself with Kai last month. I get it. I get why he put himself in that position." The amber ninja lowered her head in defeat to the conversation.

"So what are we going to do about this?" Kai raised an eyebrow since things started appearing to be at a stalemate. They couldn't hand over something that should be kept secret, but they also felt a bit guilty about the situation with Ronin and Derrick's debts too. "We haven't really even heard back from the others, maybe they stopped them?"

A door slammed open. "Well that went horribly wrong!" Seliel's pissed off voice came from the monastery entrance. So much for that ounce of hope. Sweat dripped down her forehead as she trudged in.

Zane just sighed as he followed, "Ruby's a-wall, Sigan and Morro have vanished; I'm afraid we're in quite a mess let us say." The ice ninja then noticed their new guests. "Might I ask who these men are?" He looked to the senseis.

Lloyd stuck his head in, "I don't even know what's going on anymore," he shuddered, "all I know is that I do not recommend getting possessed!"

Misako flinched when she heard that from him, quickly running over and hugging him tightly, "What happened to you!?" she held his face, looking him over. "What did Morro do to you!?" she narrowed her eyes, ready to fight the insane ghost herself now for even touching her baby boy, forgetting about her brother.

"MOM!" he shouted, trying to pull away from her grip. "Not now!"

Ronin chuckled at her behavior, "Some kids you have Mimi; I never realized my own nephew was our savior. What a brat." He noticed the green colored robes on the blonde as he fought his mother.

Lloyd then looked back to his mom. "I… have more than Wu as an uncle huh?"

He also looked to Willow who pointed to their new guests. "So that's uncle Ronin; mom's brother; and that's his boyfriend. He seems nice, likes cats. I could hang with him no problem." She smiled at the more cheerful of the two.

"I know everything's a mess right now," Cole tiredly leaned against the wall when his brother pretty much ran to quietly hug him, happy to see he was okay, "but I think we need to break it to Hatsu about what's up with her daughter… and find out where Sigan and Morro disappeared too while we were fighting Ruby-"

The sound of more glass breaking and wood cracking echoed from down the long hallway. It was coming from Wu's room and then some creaky floorboards followed by dead silence. An odd frequency was heard coming from the communicator on Ronin's gauntlet.

 _"Looks like you incompetent thieves did a good job distracted the ninja, so thanks for that; we won't be coming after you; consider the favor fulfilled because there won't be anything stopping us now!"_

"Sigan!"

 _"Say hi to Hattie for me ninja. I doubt you'll be able to find us before the world comes to an end in a matter of days! Finally a world I always dreamed about will become a reality! Ultimate destruction as far as the eye can see."_

The feed went silent and there was nothing but dead air in the room. It was a mixture of "What the hell just happened?" and the dreadful fear of their impending doom being brought forth by two mad men and a possessed demon girl.

"We screwed up," Derrick whispered, raising a hand to cover his mouth in shock.

"If we knew about that scroll before hand; we would have been way more alert and realized Ruby was just a distraction for us," Pixal covered her own face in humiliation of being beaten.

Garmadon smacked Wu's shoulder angrily. "This is what happens when you do nothing but keep secrets from all of us! Stuff like this happens! When will you stop doing this to everyone? I should have been told about this a long time ago!"

"You were infected with the venom! Even if I knew how important it was; I wouldn't have told you anyways," The younger brother pointed out.

"Okay; but you never ever would ask father questions about anything! For years I actually believed you were, in fact, smarter than I was! Oh boy I am not going to let you forget this crap! Even in his death you're just his mindless little drone."

While the brothers argued more, everyone slowly started clearing out of the room. Misako pulled her own brother to the side and glared up at him, gripping part of the serape that he wore around his shoulders. "Okay; I get why you made the deal Ro; I really do understand why… but now that you got involved; you better help us out; do you hear me?"

"And what if I say no?" His eyebrow twitched up; certain that she would kill him. "Hypothetically?" He uneasily smiled at her.

"You're a part of this now whether you like it or not." She tightly smiled as she released her grip and walked away.

 **To cover a couple of things before I jump in here about the last update... to that anon from the last chapter, or to anyone in general in the case this ran through your head... Don't be homophobic about Ronin please, just please do not... plus, "Gay" is only a bad word to use if you're using it like an insult. Also, you did not jinx yourself about CameronxWillow being a thing... because it was never ever going to happen in the first place whether people talked about it or not. And yes, 8 months of knowing each other feels too rushed for characters like Lloyd and Lindsy for me, I'm sorry, but that's my feelings on the matter, don't expect lovey couple stuff. Lloyd's ace anyways and they're just 17. I'd like to have them grow up a little more and develop.**

 **Now that I got that out of the way, I regretfully say that this is going to be finished after Halloween despite my best efforts. You see, I got last minute got tickets to go to Comickaze in LA and I'll be attending Saturday and Sunday, though it doesn't go that late so I could still work on stuff. But tomorrow I'm purely focusing on finishing my Overwatch cosplays since I now have everything I need to finish them in time to wear them Sunday and on Halloween. I know you guys always tell me to not push and burn myself out ((but who are we kidding, I mindlessly do that anyways despite my best efforts)) but yea, the result will be in a delayed completion of this fic. Pray I get one of those huge bouts of inspiration where I bust out 3 chapters in a day, because that would be super great lol**

 **Thank you guys for reading, I'll see you soon!**

 **~Mar**


	8. Chapter 8

It was now the afternoon before Sigan would destroy the world, and he was no doubt preparing everything he needed to do.

No one had yet to say about what became of Ruby to Hatsu; they just lied and claimed they didn't see her when they went back to the old monastery site and that maybe she would be more than happy to see her mother. She continued to worry though about whether or not that was true, but they had to keep her in the dark for now.

Right now; they just had to focus on getting to the old time master before he really did it.

Ronin sat with his arms folded while everyone else around him talked and speculated about what they were going to do next, unlike him, who would rather being doing something better if he was going to be forced to help them. He was very far from engaging in conversation in general though, despite Willow and Cameron pestering him with the most with the most random of questions either could come up with.

"So like, you're older than my mom right?" Willow leaned on the table they were sitting him. "How come she has gray hair and you don't really? You must be like, what? Fifty-seven or something?" She frowned, leaning closer, being he scooted away more every time they were remotely near him.

"Because she probably did the usual thing she always did and overworked herself for too many years in a row, aka since she could walk, which is fifty plus years… and she doesn't care about an easily attained product called hair dye." He listlessly answered her.

Willow frowned at the testy answer he gave her, but it didn't stop her. "What? You saying you dye your hair? I thought you guys were poor, stingy swindlers that ran a stupid pawn shop."

"I'm also easily irritated."

"So can I be the flower girl at your guys' wedding or what?" she thumbed over to Derrick who was petting one of the cats. The little furry creatures all seemed to like him, which made her dad question just how bad he was if his cats liked him.

"What!?"

"You're gonna marry him aren't you? I thought he was your boyfriend," Cameron spoke up next, scooting close to his friend. "Dude; why's your face all red again?" They examined the embarrassed look on his face.

Ronin turned away, slouching down grumpily. "Ugh don't you two have better things to do than to bug me with nonsense?!"

"It's not like you're doing anything remotely important so why the hell not bug you? It's kind of fun to see you get all irritated at us." Cameron yawned. "And it's not like we're allowed to partake in this mission; we're too _young_ and _inexperienced_ ," he mocked his brother's words to him. "Meanwhile my brother and his friends were like, around my age when they became ninja and stopped her dad and all sorts of bad guys!"

"You are kids who barely have a grip on your own powers; don't be so surprised if they treat you like that." He looked around. "At least this place is nicer than our dive in that hell of a city Stiix," he admitted more to himself.

"What did you say?" Misako's ears seemed to pick up what he said.

"What? Stiix? It's an actual hellhole; always rains, it's a scummy fishing town on the water and I've lived there for literally years and like, people aren't always the nicest, did I mention it reeks of low tide constantly? It was the only place I thought those damn ghosts couldn't find me, but it seemed they knew just where to look-"

"The river of Styx that leads to hell? Is it a reference to that?" the adults looked at each other, thinking of the same thing now. "Does that mean it's a weak point in the barrier closest to the Cursed Realm?"

"And from there you could… affect all of the other realms like a chain reaction!" Misako and Wu said at the same time.

Garmadon sighed with a tight smile, not believing that his brother in-law could have just figured out the hiding place, "Looks like you may have just helped us after all you clown. Who would have guessed your complaining could help us for once."

"So if we look at other names for supposed beliefs of the world," Zane looked at one of the old books Misako had pulled out. "Sixteen realms; Ninjago is one, we're here on earth, Cursed Realm is just another name for hell I guess," He looked at the list, "The Underworld must be some form of the belief of purgatory, the… Departed Realm is Heaven?"

"And then you have every realm in between, it gets insane trust me, but all we need to know is the Cured Realm right now." Misako continued, brushing off the other realm talk for now.

"Hey what's Cloud Kingdo-" Jay saw another one on the list that was listed above Ninjago.

"WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT ONE," Garmadon pulled the book away, slamming it shut like he had just seen something horrifying. "We just don't. Ever."

"It said it was between Ninjago and the Realm of the Departed-"

"EVER JAY."

"Okay then," Nya folded her hands together. "So I take it we're going to Stiix then?" The adults gave her a nod. "I'll prep the Bounty then! No way am I sitting out of this one when you'll need me to pilot it!"

She jumped to her feet, excited that they would be using the old ship again. They kept it docked down a ways from the lake in a small cave base she designed more than a year ago when they started living at the monastery together. It was similar to her own Samurai X cave.

Skylar and Kai sighed. "We'll stay here then and watch the kids," they half-heartedly offered, though it was really against Kai's wishes, then again, he didn't want his girlfriend to be in charge of three babies on her own. "But no one's said anything yet about Ruby to Hatsu… Don't you think she would feel just a little better knowing she was just under some kind of spell? I mean, just so she knows?"

"I don't think we should let her know yet," Cole folded his arms. "I know it wouldn't ease her mind at all and it could distract her right out the gate than if Sigan showed her himself. I personally don't even think she should be coming along with us, she should stay behind here; she likes the kids and would probably do a good job taking care of them."

"She has every right to come along and face this! You can't deny her that," Seliel walked past him, following the way Nya left. "Someone go tell her by the way, we need to leave ASAP! Nya will be around in a few minutes to pick everyone up!"

"Oh are we going back home?" Derrick walked over, holding one of the cats that was occupying his attention.

"You really need to pay attention more you know." Ronin sighed; not too keen on putting themselves at risk to be killed in a horrible way.

"Cameron and Willow, stay here and hold the place down with Skylar and Kai while we're gone; we don't need you guys getting hurt much less hearing from Lou that we're keeping his kid here much less giving him the news you got hurt!" Garmadon shouted as he started out of the room as well.

The two kids just exchanged angry glances at one another; of course they would be told that!

* * *

Hatsu looked around at the ground as the Bounty sailed through the sky, looking ahead to the small city they were seeking along the eastern coast line. "Wow, a whole town on the ocean; it's so quaint and kind of cute," she smiled brightly at it. "I don't really see what's so bad about it, it looks so peaceful this time of day… shame Sigan wants to destroy it…" her hand clutch the fabric over her chest, looking down.

"It'll always be a gloomy trash town if you asked me," Ronin grumbled. "It always rain's here, it's horrible."

"I don't think she was that bad," Derrick whispered to him, holding his hand. "I think we've had some nice times there Ronin, you want to just up and move when we're done here with this?"

"I would love to, thanks for asking actually." The other tiredly sighed; now that they were apparently off the hook for anything that has to do with the ghosts, there wasn't any real reason to stick around a place he hated. "But we're kind of wanted in how many places?!"

"There's always Ninjago City… we technically hadn't done anything there, I'm sure some places even forgot about us!" his boyfriend sounded far more optimistic than he did.

Lloyd looked over at the two talking with Hatsu, "I can see why you don't talk about him now," he looked to his parents next. "Think we'll be able to stop them? I mean… you know what happened to Ruby. She was going to choose to help us and Sigan just…" The green ninja kept his voice low, not wanting Hatsu to overhear about that. "What if she really ends up doing this? What's so great about that thing they stole anyways?"

His mother sighed tiredly at the question, "Well, I don't know too much about it, but what I do know is that the scroll has some… fallback spell thing your grandfather created in the case he wanted to reverse what he did; I'm not really sure since I never saw this thing before, but it was a stupid thing for him to create." She had admitted. "But it could quite possibly dissolve all of our known reality let's say."

"Remember what we said about barrier breaking and all that?" Lloyd nodded at his father's question.

"Ready for landing guys; I'm trying to get as close as I possibly can to this place, but I think there's a storm starting," Nya spoke over the intercom, "Weapons out and keep eyes open for our guys, we don't have much time left you know."

Lloyd looked down with a sad smile; it was always their job to save the world when they planned for a fun evening, "We never even finished decorating the place for Halloween… too bad we won't get to have a party and have some fun."

* * *

Up in the control room with her were the others; Cole, Seliel, Zane, Jay, and even Pixal was brought along to help since she seemed to have plenty of knowledge and good ideas to help them out. They were all concerned, but part of them also was also confident enough to believe they could very well come out on top and win this one and be back in time to take the kids trick-or-treating.

"Bet you Kai is _really_ hating us right now for not letting him come along in the end," Seliel chuckled as she paid attention to her scanner that overlooked the layout of Stiix. "Sky seemed to be more than willing to stay home and watch our kids." She pressed her lips together, thinking about her son and daughter; they were still so small and helpless and she was partially feeling odd that she was so focused on this whole situation.

"What's your problem?" Cole asked her, seeing the new look on her face.

She shrugged her shoulders, trying to look like she was just concentrating… it didn't work. "I just think about Billie and Rosie; they're three months old Cole! I don't feel like I've been doing enough or being all that great of a mom so far; all I keep doing is training and all this stuff for this mission and," she let out an exhausted sigh. "I love them; I really do, but sometimes I feel like I can't handle it. Maybe if it was just one, but it's not, it's two at once and I- like- how are we going to really raise them if we're doing this crap all the time!?"

The earth master hugged her from behind; surprising her now. "It's okay, my mom once told me as a kid that when I was born, she was similar, she had no idea how she was going to raise me… then she told me by the time Cam came around, she knew what she was doing better and-"

"And what!? You're telling me that you're planning on having another one anytime soon!?" the phantom ninja turned her head to look at him better. "I assure you Cole, I just had them three months ago; I'm so not ready to be pregnant again!" She held her hands up; remembering how miserable she was most of the time.

Cole laughed, wondering if the others across the room were listening to them. "No no, I didn't say that, but it give a few more weeks maybe when all of this settles and we _win_ ," he punched that word while shoving her shoulder lightly, "maybe you'll be able to focus on them more than you probably have been."

"It's just you've been so much more on top of things with them than I have and I feel so crappy over it," she pouted more, thinking about how they really did like him better.

"I know they love you too you know," he chuckled. She just shrugged her shoulders again and he kissed her cheek.

"Ew… gross!"

"SHH! That was loud!"

"Sorry; it's just gross whenever he does that you know. Like, yuck."

"I don't believe this," Jay sighed, being they all heard it come from their little utility closet. "They didn't," he ran to the small closet and threw the door open to reveal Cameron and Willow behind the door, obviously cramped from the way they were pressed up shoulder to shoulder. "GUYS!"

"Don't tell dad!" Willow held her hands up frantically, falling out of the closet and getting on her knees with her friend.

"YEA! We just wanted to help you guys out! Honest!" Cameron begged of them.

His older brother was more pissed than any of the others there, "NO! They're finding out! Right now! We told you that you weren't going to come because you can't use your powers at all! You think you're some great ninja because you watch me and I am not explaining to dad how my little brother got killed in a fight with crazy people!"

Zane held a hand to his face, "Well it's not like we have time to turn around and kick them off, we're right here and we're out of time frankly, we can't afford to waste another two hours you know," he looked to Cole with the reality check.

"You don't leave this ship while we're out there, and the others are gonna hear that you two shrimps snuck on!" The bigger ninja snapped and started out the door to the main deck. "Unbelievable," he shook his head, though he was met by a gust a wind that shook the whole ship. "What the heck!" he grabbed the nearest doorway, afraid he was going to be swept off the deck.

"Seems like Morro sees us and decided to give us a bad time," Ronin clung to the railing of the ship, looking as if he was going to throw up from the intense rocking motion. "How can you get seasick in the air?!" he complained.

"We'll need to set the ship down now then, we won't be able to get any closer; they know we're coming obviously; of course we would show up to stop them," Wu gripped his staff, not looking forward to this anymore than the others were; facing Morro after how many years was the most terrifying thing for him now.

Cole nodded, "I guess I'll let Nya know what that was all about then and we'll have to put the Bounty down." He ran back up the stairs to alert their pilot; he would be back in a minute to tattle on Willow and his brother, but team safety came first.

 ***still feels bad I didn't finish this before Halloween even though everyone is okay with that, but now I need to simulatenously think of a Christ,as idea that can lead from how I want this one to end* HI GUYS! Comikaze and Halloween was fun! I dressed as DVa from Overwatch and a lot of people really liked it! It was so much fun being her, I can't wait until Anime Expo next year so I can I wear it again lol**

 **Anyways, there'll probably be... eeeeeeh 2 more chapters I think... it gets real in the next chapter and then I need a good closer before I can finish this off. I actually forced myself to finish the bulk of this one at 2 am last night :P But you guys KNEW that Will and Cam had to be here for this in one way or another... I like to think of them as Spritil and Chimchim from Speed Racer because they always stow away in the car's trunk during their adventures (yes, I watch hella old anime sometimes lol) Derrick also wants a cat; get your boyfriend a cat Ronin and stop being uptight.**

 **Also, angsty mom Sel... that's a thing now I guess... it's funny because I do plan on having her and Cole have a bunch more kids... how many? I'll never tell, you'll have to find out later... or like, at least until I decide to sit my butt down and draw some of what they're kids are going to look like.**

 **Alright though, that's all I have to say guys, I'll see you later this week with hopefully, another chapter. (then maybe I can focus more on some other stuff :)))))) ) Thanks for reading though! :)**

 **~Mar**


	9. Chapter 9

Garmadon had dragged his daughter by the ear in one of the below deck bedrooms, pushing her by the shoulders to sit down on one of the old bunks; Cameron just complied without a single word because he was genuinely terrified of the old man and didn't feel like dying right now.

"If we weren't in the middle of a mess of this magnitude, I would properly punish you both! I don't think you understand what being a ninja, much less a student, means in this family," he scolded. "How _dare_ you come along against my wishes! The other children may be a lot of troublemakers, but at least they know when they're in over their heads with something!"

"Don't punish him dad; I convinced him to come; it's not his fault," she rubbed her ear, still feeling it ache from being yanked on. "Okay? He had nothing to do with this; I literally twisted his arm."

The father narrowed his eyes; he couldn't scratch on her for her honesty, much less loyalty in protecting her friend. Lloyd, though plenty like him, seemed to inherit the best traits of him and his wife, but probably was more like Misako than they all thought; Willow was just him as a twelve year old girl. She was stubborn, had no regard for ground rules, sneaky beyond recognition, and protective over people and things she cared about.

"Some days it's like looking in a mirror when I see you, I swear," he shook his head. "You're going to stay here and do whatever the hell Nya tells you to do; we can discuss your punishment when we get back home if we live long enough to see it through."

"Yes dad…" the brunette sighed, slumping down more; still pissed off the others turned them over to her parents and ratted them out.

"W-We'll be good," Cameron quickly nodded. "I promise sir! I won't let her out of my sight and I'll do whatever Nya says!" he swallowed hard as the sensei walked back up top on the deck.

* * *

Lloyd strapped his sword to his back and pulled his gloves on, shivering a bit at the misty ocean air, "I'm ready if you guys are," he quietly said; not wanting to have to go through with this. "Where do you think they're hiding out?" He looked to the slowly setting sun getting lower in the sky.

"Don't know; but I'm sure Morro will likely want to keep away from the water as best her can," Ronin started walking down the boarding ramp. When the ninja seemed confused by this he rolled his eyes, "Ghosts dissolve with water you know; that's why I thought this place would be pretty good to hide out in."

"Oooh," the guys quietly said together; taking a mental note for the future.

"Two teams; one tales east, other takes west, and hopefully we'll find something worth our time," Misako adjusted a strap on her gauntlet, eyeing her brother. "You two are coming with me and you better not argue it," she snapped her fingers. "Cole, Zane, and Pixal; you're coming too with us."

"Yes ma'am!" The ninja straightened up when their names were called.

"Nya, Cam, and Willow will remain here and will provide any kind of support they can if things get bad, and they should remain relatively safe," the older woman continued. "Garmadon and Wu will take the rest of you and go west," she addressed Jay, Seliel, Lloyd, and Hatsu who agreed.

Her husband kissed her cheek and looked down the way he would be going, "See you soon then love."

"Right," she nodded once, not even giving a little bit of a smile. "I just can't stop thinking about Wu seeing Morro again though; what if something bad really does happen and he just locks up?"

"Don't worry about it; he's my brother, I'll look out for him and nothing bad will happen," he tried to make light of their situation as he started to walk away, poking her cheek. "Come on kids!"

Seliel and Cole looked at one another cautiously, but knew it was useless to dispute the team set up since their teachers probably wanted even teams since all of them had their own strengths. It would be fine; it wasn't like they weren't ever going to see each other again! They were all going to be in the same vicinity.

* * *

"So the very center of town is where the weakest point is; I can feel it." Sigan looked over a map of Stiix intently. "I guess we have a plan then," he turned to Morro, "You delayed them enough for me to get there with Ruby? I know they're going to show up and crash my Halloween party."

The master of the wind gave a thumbs up and smirked, "I blew the wind so hard they had to set their ship down pretty fast before they could get plenty close. And those idiots won't be any trouble; they're all weak and stupid children who think they can do anything." He snorted at the thought of seeing them again.

Sigan seemed please by what the ghost had said and looked down at his emotionless daughter, petting her dark head a bit as she stood at attention by his side. "Soon my darling; soon you'll bring the very end of the world and there won't be anyone strong enough to stop me."

* * *

"So it doesn't seem like anybody has seen our guys, you would think people like Morro or Sigan would stick out like a sore thumb around here," Derrick walked back over. "Sorry; they must have been hiding out really well if no one knows anything about them," he scratched the back of his head. "Where to next?"

Misako frowned deeply, wondering how they could avoid so much attention. That point aside, she shrugged her shoulders, "We'll keep searching for any possible place they could be; and move quickly and quietly; we could attract too much attention you know and they could see us coming a mile away," she warned the others.

Pixal's green eyes lit up as she directed her attention to the shops and homes lined up on both their sides. "I have set my scanners to pick up the ghost signature Morro gave off back at the old monastery," she informed the other ninja. "Maybe that way; we can get a better location… I do wish my scan could be bigger though!"

"You scanned Morro?" Cole raised an eyebrow.

She nodded enthusiastically, "I'm always scanning everything I come into contact with. Mr. Borg thought it could be useful."

Ronin folded his arms, leaning to the side, "Look at that; robo-girl really is smart then like what you guys were going on about. You probably can look for any ecto-plasmic signatures only he could give off."

Pixal nodded, smiling brighter, "Yes! Exactly! If a trail is fresh enough; I can also use that, though they tend to fade after around five to ten minutes, so we'll have to cover more ground faster, since my scan range isn't as wide as it could be," she folded her hands together, looking down.

"Maybe we can talk to Cyrus about fixing that at some point," Zane mindless said; keeping an eye out as well. "Let's move then and maybe we'll be able to find them."

Misako followed along, "I guess I'll let the others know about what Pixal can do for us then," she pressed the button on her communicator.

* * *

Jay dragged his feet along the wooden planks of the boardwalk that ran under the town. "Maybe we should just look someplace else; they're obviously not here you know," the blue ninja folded his arms, wishing he was allowed to stay back on the ship with his wife. "If we die; I wanna be with Nya." He admitted.

"No one's going to die Jay!" Seliel rolled her brown eyes. "How do you think I feel though? I have two babies back home and Cole and I are split up into separate teams too," she pointed out to him. "Just stay focused and we can get through this before dark."

"Well hey, my mom is sure that Pixal can figure out where they are, it's just best to keep looking until they actually call back with an update on that," Lloyd sighed, hating listing to the bickering of the others.

Wu was the most on edge of them all, Lloyd and Garmadon knew best how he never wanted to see Morro again; especially after the story his nephew told about trying to possess his body so that he could be the green ninja. The boy was furious and unstable; it wasn't like he could have a rational conversation much less listen to what he had to say; Morro was just too angry.

"I think I hear voices," Hatsu squeaked, stopping in her tracks, trying to listen harder. "It's a ways down… but I think it could be them; I heard the words realm crystal dropped," she took a few more steps forward; still cautious. "I hope Ruby's okay," she breathed. "I don't know how she could go through with this! The lies he must be telling her… I had hoped she was smarter than I was…"

Lloyd felt so guilty. Ruby was a good friend in his Darkly Days, it felt wrong to keep the fact she was brainwashed away from her mother who genuinely cared about her. "She's not acting on her own will; you and Ruby have demon blood and Sigan has been controlling you for years using various spells people from old Ninjago made to make you fight for them most of the time."

The demon stared at the green ninja. "W-What?"

"Lloyd…" Garmadon looked back at Hatsu, not sure if it was a good idea to set her off into a panicked frenzy. His son continued on though.

"You weren't always yourself when you fought people; Sigan whispered something to Ruby while we were at the monastery site and she then tried to kill all of us there for her dad." He went on. "I'm sorry Hatsu; Ruby won't be herself when you get to see her; I don't know how long it'll take till she's normal again if you can get her away from Si."

The poor mother held a hand to her face; looking more distressed. "Then that just means I have a reason to find them faster and stop this more than ever now!" She spread her wings and decided she was going to fly ahead of them whether they could keep up with her or not.

"Hatsu! Wait! Don't just charge in there! We need to work together! Don't make me drag you back by those damn freaking wings!" Seliel growled angrily at the older woman as she grabbed Jay and Lloyd by the wrists and dragged them on faster. "Senseis! Hurry up!"

Garmadon and Wu simultaneously sighed at the fact they were going to have to run the rest of the way to keep up with the younger ones. "Maybe Misako was right after all and we are getting just a bit too old for this," Wu clutched his staff closer as he ran.

* * *

Pixal stopped in her tracks, looking cautiously at the door she had led the others to. "I am only reading the one signature now," she slowly looked to the others. "It's just Morro in there I think."

"All this way and they're not altogether?" Cole shook his head. "No; why would they split up? Sigan has to be here with his daughter somewhere in Stiix."

"Red herring; you know how those two like to mislead with cheap tactics," Zane looked unimpressed, actually expecting something like this. "I say it's not in our best interests to engage, but I'm sure that having a look through of the place could prove useful or at least get something from Morro."

"Ugh; I don't wanna have to fight Morro again; he's so annoying with the wind powers," the younger earth ninja grumbled.

"Some former students you have; they're scared of a little ghost," Ronin joked with his sister.

Misako cracked her knuckles and looked to the door again. "He tried to possess my son, maybe we can get something out of him. You said that ghosts don't like water?"

Ronin and Derrick exchanged looks then smirked. "Oh I see what you're getting at!"

* * *

Hatsu's messy black hair whipped around her pale face as she left the others in the dust. "Ruby! I'm coming!" She could feel her heart pounding away in her chest.

"Hey this is around the middle of the town," Wu noticed the signs. "I guess this is where it's going to happen if she's leading us to them. We're running out of time." The sky was now turning black as the sunlight slipped away.

The older brother agreed, but it's not like they could run any faster than they already were; they just needed to hope that Hatsu was going to be strong enough and maybe bring Ruby back. "Aren't we always running out of time though!? The elusive bastard always decides he wants to randomly slip back in and ruin our lives when we least expect it."

Ruby blankly stared at the little scroll she was given, reading it over as the moon began to rise. Her father gripped her shoulders. "Do it like we rehearsed dear, and your daddy will be a very happy man," he narrowed his eyes, suspecting that she was going to break free and decide to not help him anymore.

Like a good girl, she had obeyed his command.

"SIGAN!"

"Oh great; now what!?" the time ninja was most certainly irritated that they were being interrupted right when things were getting to the good part for him. "I suppose I did see this as a possible option though… you lot splitting up and managing to find us." He tossed the realm crystal up in the air a few times. "Did you know that if this thing shatters instead of properly being disposed of; the Cursed Realm could just… come crashing down right on top of us and the world would be destroyed anyways?"

"Then why go through all of this trouble with Ruby and that scroll!?" Seliel was holding Hatsu back with little to no effort now that they caught up to her. "You could have just broken it this whole time!"

The time ninja shook his head, chuckling, "No no no, where is the fun in that? I want all of the realms to break apart at once! For everything to mix into an uglier world and watch humans and monsters tear each other apart! That's what I want child."

Ruby stared with the same blank eyes at the others, looking back at the scroll she was reading from. When her father snapped his fingers, she spread her wings and silently flew out to finish the spell with no interruptions.

"Morro should be taking good care of the others as we speak; I'm just going to make sure that Ruby won't be further interrupted in her completing her job by you pesky ninja!" His eyes glowed bright blue. "Happy Halloween Ninja!"

 **Phew, worked non stop on this one. I'm so happy I'm almost all done with this! Not much to say about this update; this one jumped around a lot, but all I hope for is that it's coherent... like, it's coherent to me, but at 2 am, everything is. Also, may or may not plan to shed some light on Wu and Morro and Sayu in the next chapter... I don't know yet if it'll work out how I want it to since I just started on that one lol**

 **Thank you guys for reading though! See you later :)**

 **~Mar**


	10. Chapter 10

Morro had phased through the wall; he knew they were out there; probably hoping to find something about his time ninja ally. "So where's Wu and the green brat? I wanted to pay my regards to the old fool and his stupid underling before the world starts to end." He looked around more when no one responded, "I know you freaks are hiding, I always know, I can feel you breathing; I am the master of air and wind after all."

Misako clenched her teeth and stepped out first. "You tried to possess my son… nephew," she gripped the staff of her scythe. "I don't like it when people try to hurt my kids, even if they are also family, but you don't seem to want to believe that we are family."

"I know there's more of you here woman; you're not going get that one past me either," Morro spat. "And you're not my family; none of you are! What your brat son said was a lie!"

"Wu _is_ your father! You're just too blinded with hate that you don't care that he wanted what was best for you, and to this day he's refused to forgive himself for getting your hopes up, but it's time to stop and just tell us where Sigan is and how we can reverse the spell on Ruby so she won't destroy the world!"

The wind master shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "I don't care about Sigan or what he does in the end, you know, I'm only doing this so my master, The Preeminent, can finally rise and smite the world and all her cursed children for trapping us away like animals! Leaving us to rot away and be forgotten!"

Misako rolled her eyes and whistled. From around the corner, the others had buckets of water they attempted to splash Morro with; clipping his limbs just enough to get his attention when he noticed who was helping. "Should have known you two idiots would be helping them once I let you go!" His face twisted with more anger.

"Bet your ass we would try to stop you; you jerk!" Ronin shouted. "I won't hesitate to dump this whole bucket on you too so I would watch it if you don't want to go bye bye!"

"Me too!" his boyfriend added in, equally angry with the ghost. "How dare you try to make him do bad stuff while using my life as leverage!"

The ghost held his hands up; looking at the six that surrounded him, not really wanting to get into it, much less lose his form and disintegrate into thin air.

"Okay then; I see how this is going to play out. Your friends have already made it to Sigan at a little abandoned place in middle of town where the barrier will be at its true weakest; but it's too late! Soon, his daughter will end the world. And no, I don't know what he did to make her fall under his command like he did so don't bother with asking me that one."

"Move it before I kick you into the ocean then!" Misako growled while her brother almost spilt more water on him.

* * *

Willow was practically falling asleep she was so bored of sitting around and doing nothing while staring at a perfectly normal screen that held the map of Ninjago on it. She wanted to fight so badly; the young girl was plenty good with her powers, even if she didn't know how to use a weapon.

Right when she nodded off was when the alert system started going off like crazy, making her nearly fall off her chair. "I didn't do anything!" she snapped, shaking her head a bit. "NYA!" she shouted, not knowing what the readings meant. "What's going on?!"

The samurai looked over from the window and ran over to the monitor to see what the girl was talking about. "Oh gosh," she clicked away at the keyboard, "I think it's starting; these are some pretty spooky supernatural kind of readings," she told her. "I think these are the realm portals opening up, normally, some open around this time because of Halloween, but these shouldn't be here and I have a feeling all sorts of creatures are going to be invading," she pointed to very black hole like symbols.

Cameron stared, not liking the sound of that. "We gotta do something guys!" he shouted. "What can we do?!"

Nya shook her head, sitting down, "there isn't anything we can do; they most likely know this is happening, but Sigan's really powerful from what we've seen; he kept my brother in a weird sleep trance thing for two months, and he did with everyone; sapping their energy and powers. He's not someone we can take down so easily Cameron much less the three of us. I'm pregnant and you two are kids."

Willow slid off the chair and folded her arms in defiance, "I don't care! He doesn't scare me! Maybe we can make a difference and help! So what if we're still kids?!"

"Sit back down! Do you want me to tell your dad you gave me nothing but trouble while they were out!?"

"No ma'am," both kids mumbled grouchily as they conceded defeat.

* * *

Everyone cautiously looked at Sigan; he was going to stop them at all costs from getting up to the roof to his daughter. "She's mine and no one else's! You're not going to take another asset from me!"

"SHE'S A CHILD!" Hatsu practically screamed at him when he dared to call her daughter nothing more than a mere asset. It also stung because for the first time in tens of years; she was finally hearing what he was really like.

"I take him from the left with Jay; you take the right with your uncle, and Hatsu and Seliel can handle Ruby up top while we distract him and maybe they can snap her out of it and get her to stop," Garmadon swallowed, talking to his son when he noticed the phantom ninja holding onto the demon woman for dear life as she furiously tried to shake her off so she could fly around better.

"Hatsu! Wait!" she shouted, clenching her teeth.

Sigan smirked, "Listen here kiddos," he looked back to Garmadon and Wu, "I kicked your butts so many times before, and I won't hesitate to do it again," he spread his fingers, three kunai falling between the digits as he swung his arm around, flinging the dagger like weapons at the remaining ninja.

Jay shrieked as he tackled Lloyd while trying to get down. "I'm hit!"

"It just grazed your cheek! Get off of me!" Lloyd sighed, pushing the blue ninja away. "You need to stop freaking out so much when that stuff happens; you've had worse injuries you know," he dusted his tunic off and gripped the hilt of his katana. "I still can't believe this is happening; how did you guys even capture him in the first place all those years ago?!"

"There was only one time," Wu sighed, "And that was with Hatsu's help; you were a newborn and well… Ronin had you kidnapped for leverage with us, it turned out to be Sigan who was behind it all… But Hatsu was the one that beat him down for us and we managed to tie him up, and leave him in Kryptarium where he belongs. It was a big effort."

Lloyd glanced, "Yikes." It was all he could manage to say to that bit of news. "Well, we have to do something guys!" He pulled Jay to his feet. "I hope mom and the others get here soon or else I have a feeling we won't stop her before she's done," he looked up to the high ceiling where the break in the roof was.

* * *

"RUBY!" Hatsu shouted when she saw her daughter. "Get off of me! Come on!" she pouted at Seliel who was still clinging to her. "I didn't ask you to come up here with me!"

The phantom ninja dropped to the roof and took in a deep breath. "Be careful Hatsu! You don't know how she'll react! I think I would know how lethal she probably can be!" she held a hand out, cautioning her.

The older woman's hands curled up into fists. "Ruby; what did he do to you to make you want this?" she asked the girl that was ignoring her. "Why would you believe that I had died and he was going to care for you?" She looked up at the cracking sky as their reality started to slowly fall apart. "This is all my fault; like an idiot I kept running back to him… as if I needed him to be whole and complete… now he's doing the same thing to you; making you dependant on him."

She glanced at the parchment in her daughter's hands and lunged forward. "Well I'm not going to let that happen! I didn't have help when I was with him, but I can help you!" she tackled the girl down, wrestling for control over the scroll. "Give me that blasted thing! I didn't raise you to destroy the world! I… I sent you away… I'm a horrible mother," her eyes started welling up, full of tears.

Ruby stopped for a moment, hands still grasping at the scroll with a vice like grip. Her now red eyes were still blank as she stared at Hatsu.

"On the roof! I think I see Seliel up there on the ledge; she must be watching something," Seliel perked up when she heard Pixal's voice from down below.

"GUYS!" She shouted. "Sigan's kicking their butts down there! Help them! I got this up here!" She gave a thumbs up.

"Got it honey! Be careful up there though!" Cole shouted back in response.

"I will!" she called back and turned to the mother and daughter. "Hatsu…" she breathed, wondering why they were at a standstill now. "Hatsu you- you're not a horrible mother." She looked at Ruby who was staring at her too now; at least she wasn't reading the scroll anymore, maybe her brain was trying to distinguish reality from Sigan's lies. "Y-You tried to protect her when you sent her away."

"Some job I did! She's looking at me like she doesn't even know me anymore," the demon sniffed as she looked at the sixteen year old.

The pink haired ninja folded her arms, looking down, letting out a tired breath. "You tried, okay? You tried to help her and," she managed to wrench the scroll from the girl's hands now that both were distracted, "and maybe she'll be a little… different and will have to relearn some stuff, but it isn't your fault; it's _his_." She blamed the time ninja.

* * *

"Morro you incompetent idiot; gone and got yourself capture huh?" Sigan spat when he saw Cole and Zane join in behind the others, all wanting nothing more than to line up and take turns smacking him until he could be knocked out.

The ghost's face looked dark and sarcastic as he looked to the white gem that stopped glowing, "Some faith I put into you; I never should have thought for a moment that a stupid little girl would be the perfect plan; it's over Sigan; we've lost this fight, they have the realm crystal and your stupid scroll."

Wu stared at the ghost who was silent with anger; his son who he thought he would never get the chance to see again. "Morro…"

"Don't talk to me," he spat back. "I don't care what the truth is anymore about who you people are to me; I just don't want to ever go back to the wretched, disgusting Cursed Realm ever again where I'll have to rot away… and I think I finally know a way to fix that," he eyed the storm clouds that were rolling into the town; surely a thunderstorm was on it's way and fast.

"Morro, I'm sorry you feel I misled you, but I had no idea, I just wanted it to be you as much as you wanted it, I didn't make up the rules; I just wanted my son to be a hero, and maybe that was too much for me to ask, and I accept that," Wu held a hand up, trying to make peace with the boy.

"Still with the same excuses you gave me before when I was still alive," he shook his head with a sad smirk as a crack of thunder sounded and heavy rain pelted the rooftops. "Good luck with the outcome of you stupid, poorly thought out scheme Si… remember what I told you if we were to get caught? I'm a ghost; no one can catch me like they can with you," he took a step back; surely Ronin was going to threaten him to stay.

"Eeergh!" The time ninja growled. "RUBY! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING UP THERE!?" he shouted at her, but no response came as Cole cracked his knuckles, Misako coming up behind him.

"You're going to see what happened when you kidnap our kids for your stupid plans jackass."

"It seems you have some cleaning up to do then…" attention was turned back to Morro as rain started pounding on the roof even harder if that was possible. "By sensei; I'll say hi to mom for you, that much I can do." he quietly said before passing through the doorway into the rain.

"Oh my gosh." Derrick seemed completely stunned that the kid was pretty much committing suicide by going outside. "I… you're just going to let him go!?"

Wu looked away, shaking his head. There wasn't really anything more he could have said. It wasn't like Morro would want to stay as a ghost in their world anyways.

Garmadon didn't look pleased with the answer given, "he was your kid Wu… you know you could have done more."

"A kid I never expected to have, nor was I even good at parenting, and there was nothing I could do to change him." The younger brother turned his back to the others. "Now; I think we should work on a child that actually has a chance to be saved from insanity." He of course was speaking of little Ruby. "I'll see to that scroll getting burned and that crystal be taken care of; now get that time ninja out of my face and throw him back in a cell where he belongs."

"Yes sensei," Zane quietly spoke for the others.

"I'll make sure they get Ruby down safely," Lloyd volunteered and started climbing up the wall.

 **Soooo, a little anti climatic. I'm not all that great with action, I'm more of a suspense driven kind of writer... like Death Note, ya know? Epilogue is almost done and should be up tomorrow or... since it's 5 am, maybe later today? I can't sleep, I'm just disappointed (which is an understatement) and I'm sure you know why.**

 **ANYWAYS, Morro still 'kills himself' I guess... oh boy I write about cheery topics now don't I? Not much for me to say other than idk if I'm going to have Ruby have some kind of long term memory problem now because of this... she might make an appearance in my coming Christmas fic with Hatsu, Clouse, Millie, Ronin, and Derrick... in the Epilogue I'll tell you guys what I would LIKE to have happen (who the hell knows if it even will though, this is me we're talking about, I always say I'm gonna do stuff and it never ends up happening hah)**

 **So thank you for reading guys, I hope it satisfied you that Sigan is finally going to be thrown back in jail and Hatsu has her daughter back and finally accepts that Sigan is a sociopath who used her :) See ya later!**

 **~Mar**


	11. Epilogue

"So, she's gonna be okay; right? Ruby's going to be her old self again soon?" Hatsu kept asking Pixal over and over again. Her poor daughter had remained unresponsive for the most part, almost like she was still caught him her father's magic that made her a mindless drone.

"Ruby should be okay within a few days, she's not dying, there is quite a bit of brain activity going on so I would not be so worried about her," Pixal sighed, calmly and quickly answer her questions as she did have to get back to Borg Tower. "I suggest you let her be right now and enjoy the fun outdoors to help take your mind off things."

Outside, being they really owed the kids a proper Halloween; the ninja had finished setting up some of their Halloween decorations and let everyone dress up. Zane even made his great pumpkin spiced sugar cookies for the occasion, which seemed to go fast since the kids were hoarding them and not sharing with the adults which was one thing Nya, Seliel, and Cole did not enjoy.

Sadly; Misako had put Ronin in charge of watching them, and they were just not listening to a word her said. "I swear if you brats go in that forest I'm gonna hunt you all down and strangle ya!"

"He doesn't mean that! He's very nice; I promise!" Derrick ran after the other, afraid that Ronin would actually do something like that if he got frustrated enough. The kids seemed to think this was funny though.

"Well they seem to be fitting right in with everyone after a few days," Jay chuckled as he and Nya sat on the porch, leaning against each other. "For some reason; I had doubts."

Kai snorted as he sat back in his little lawn chair while holding his sleeping daughter to his chest. "Nah, they're just as crazy as the rest of us. I guess I can see why Misako didn't ever like talking about Ronin though. Great idea to set this up for the kids though; it looks like they're having fun with him. Guess that's her pay back to him."

Cole took a seat on the stairs as well now. "It's the least we can do for the students; they put up with so much crap. Ya know; always leaving them here to g on missions and save the day and all that at the risk of their fun." He closed his eyes, just happy this was all behind them and Sigan was locked up. "Oh no, I see Mickey and Arnold creeping up on Lloyd…"

He looked back up to see Lloyd and Willow sitting by the walkway, digging through a bag of their candy and talking. The green ninja didn't see it coming when the two brats jumped them; sniping the sweets away like they were professional thieves, though they at least had a few pieces that had fallen out. Lloyd was used to this so he didn't fight it.

His sister however; would not stand for this.

"HEY!" Willow jumped to her feet, arms raised as the grass and weeds came up, twisting around the other's ankles as they both fell forward, dropping their treasure. Lloyd started laughing as their attackers retreated. "Don't you mess with me!"

"Nice one; you really are like mom," Lloyd complimented her, ruffling her dark brown hair. "Soo, where did Cam go? You guys seem to spend a lot of time together you know," he teasingly rubbed shoulders with her.

Her face scrunched up, "Ew! Gross Lloyd! He's my best friend; don't start doing that to me!" She retracted more. "Cole's been doing that to Cameron too; ever since mom made us share a room when he first got here! I don't like him like that; I'm twelve for cryin' out loud!" She stuck her tongue out.

Her brother held his hands up when she started shouting at him, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry; I was just joking around Willie," he apologized several times. He then remembered when the guys would tease him about anything and everything, much less when he first met Lindsy. "No more joking though… you two can be whatever the heck you want," he promised.

She smiled a bit and nodded, but got quiet again. "So, dad told me about the Morro thing," she twisted her hair around her finger as she thought about what was described to her. "He really just… he basically killed himself Lloyd. Our own cousin… I know he was already dead since, ya know, ghost, but still." The green eyed girl stopped to think about their uncle now. "What did Wu do? I haven't seen much of him since we got back."

Lloyd shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, but I can only assume that he's taking it hard; even if he doesn't always show it to the rest of us. You know he's bottled this up and never said anything about him to us until you and Mel found his stash of stuff. He probably feels responsible for him dying twice."

"Right," Willow laid back in the grass, closing her eyes. "So like; we don't have to do anything like this anytime soon right?" she had asked, sounding slightly concerned. "I mean like; no saving the world or stopping crazy people?"

The green ninja laughed, laying back as well, "No, but trust me, these types of things aren't really all that regular for us in the past couple years, I was about your age when dad finally came home and things died down for the most part, it's kind of like… one big issue a year at this point. Sometimes we do get called in for arrests and stuff thought, but as far as super complicated plots and mad psycho time ninja? No, that's not a regular thing."

He closed his eyes, thinking about just how long he had been with his friends and family. It was a strange life for him; he had had a somewhat normal family up until about five, hell broke loose for roughly eight years, and now everyone was altogether hopefully for the rest of his life, and the family seemed to just keep getting bigger.

Lloyd came out of his thoughts though when Willow had sighed in relief, "Oh my gosh. Thank goodness; that means I can actually have an enjoyable Christmas for once in my life…" she let out a breath of relief.

"Okay guys; it's starting to get dark out, stay in the courtyard or come inside!" Misako shouted; sounding a bit annoyed with the others. "Ronin! Get out of the lake! What are you even doing in there?! It's cold out!"

The siblings chuckled when hearing their mother scold their other uncle as they got up to head inside, probably going to retreat to their beds; still tired from the whole ordeal. At least Christmas would be a normal holiday for them. Right?

 **It's done; it's over, I can finally lay this to rest lol I just wanted something quiet and simple for the final thing... originally it was going to be more about Hatsu and Ruby who was in a far worst state than I decided to make her, but yes, Ruby and Hatsu will appear in the Christmas story with Ronin and Derrick, and YES Clouse and Millie and their frikking cute kiddos. I have but one idea for this:**

 **The ninja go away the week before Christmas to just take a vacation to like, idk, a place like Big Bear mountain which is like, you can sleep in nice cabins and there's snow and skiing and all that winter fun crap, but they're going to get snowed in and have to put up with each other and it's gonna be great, I promise :) Of course that's not gonna be the sole thing that happens, but yea, that's part of the plan.**

 **I'll be starting work on that this weekend and won't start posting until December, however, it'll probably be fairly short in all honestly, maybe less than even this one. I just don't have too much time for fan fiction these days, but I will be working on Amulets again and possibly Black King because that one is also almost done, but I don't have any inspiration to finish it for now.**

 **After I clear more stuff out of the way, I'm going to attempt to post strictly one story at a time and unless there's something really special that I want to post, like the holiday stuff, then there'll be simultaneous stories going.**

 **So thank you guys for reading and I'll see you late! :D**

 **~Mar**


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